X-Windows at GWU

This tutorial shows you how to get a remote machine to display a window on your workstation:

For the tutorial, we will assume that you are currently working on (sitting at) parrot.seas.gwu.edu. This means, probably, that the Unix prompt will be parrot%.

For the tutorial, we will assume that you want to telnet to felix.seas.gwu.edu and need to bring up a Window from there.
(For Oracle, use delphi.seas.gwu.edu instead of felix).

Here are the steps to be followed:

We will start by assuming you are logged onto parrot.
(Of course, if you are sitting at some other machine, use that machine's name).
First, you will need two command-tool (or shell-tool, or xterm) windows. Bring those up now.

In one of them, type:


    parrot% xhost +localhost

You should get this message:


    localhost being added to access control list

Then type
```
    parrot% xfwd x
    
```
You should see
```
     Checking connection to "localhost:0"
 
     Tell remote client to display to parrot.seas.gwu.edu:2
 
     If you haven't already, run 'xhost +localhost'
     [Proxy service is now running; press ^C to quit]
     
```
This means that the X-window server on parrot.seas.gwu.edu is ready to receive Window commands from a remote machine.
Also, this window will be useless since the xfwd command ties up the window (it waits). When you are done with all your work, type control-c in this window to kill xfwd.
Next, in the OTHER window (command-tool, shell-tool or xterm), login into felix.seas.gwu.edu:
```
    parrot% telnet felix
    
```
Now you need to tell the X-window server on felix that you want it to send its display stuff to parrot.seas.gwu.edu. Do this by following the instructions given in the xfwd command above.
NOTE: what you type in depends on which shell you are using.
- If you are using K-shell, type:
```
    felix% export DISPLAY=parrot.seas.gwu.edu:2
      
```
- If you are using tsch, type:
```
    felix% setenv DISPLAY parrot.seas.gwu.edu:2
      
```
Now you can test whether it's working by firing up any application that brings up a window from felix.seas.gwu.edu, for example,
```
    felix% xterm &
    
```
or
```
    felix% netscape &
    
```
If everything is working, you will be prompted with a small dialog box to see if you want to allow the window to be brought up. After clicking on yes, you should see the window.

NOTE:

Since telnet is allowed only into a few machines in SEAS, it's best to use felix as the remote machine or delphi for Oracle work.
If you have a Unix or Linux machine at home (or elsewhere), you should be able to do the same thing to allow a felix window to come up at home.
If you want to fire up X-windows stuff on your PC at home, you will have to use software like Exceed (made by Hummingbird) that allows this to happen. Exceed is expensive, but I'm told there is freeware that does the same thing.
If you cannot get anything working in this set of instructions, then please seek assistance from SEAS Computing.
Finally, if you've never used X-windows (with OpenWin manager), you may want to copy over somebody's start-up file to get a nice environment set up for you. For example, if you copy over my .OWdefaults file, I have set it up so that the fonts in xterm and in my Emacs editor are nice.