Re: X over LAN

[Ken Rossman <rossman columbia edu>]

On Thursday, January 1, 2004, at 09:09 PM, L. K. Pierce wrote:
> I would like to run a remote GUI session over a LAN and possibly from
> outside the LAN.? The LAN consists of four boxes (RH 8.0, RH 9, Win2K,
> and WinXP) and a black box DSL router.? The RH 9 box is my main 
> machine;
> the RH 8.0 box is my experimental machine and has no monitor.  The
> Windows machines are used by the less enlightened here ;)
>
> My questions:
>
> 1.? Is the remote X method I will describe below safe to use on a LAN?
>
> 2.? Would it be safe if I used the same method from outside the LAN via
> the Internet?

This sounds like an excellent job for a combination of a VPN-like
connection such as PPTP, and VNC to do the GUI part.  VNC is available
on most major platforms, and is much more efficient in dealing with
limited bandwidth (i.e. a remote connection) than X is.  PPTP runs on
Linux and is also a Microsoft VPN protocol available on, at least, XP
-- not sure about any of the earlier Windows OS's).

In this case, the X protocol stuff is all done in memory on the remote
machine - only the screen changes are sent over the VNC/PPTP link...

K