Xprograms over ssh, nothing happens

Question

I'm new to SSH and trying to setup a connection to run Xapplications through my school. I made the login perfectly fine but once inside, i export the display to my ip ie:

export DISPLAY=MYIP:0.0

After that i try to run serveral xapplications for example xterm or firefox, though nothing happens. Instead of telling me that it cant reach the display or similar, I get no responce from the terminal, i have to ctrl + C to get back to the prompt.

I get the feeling I'm missing something simple..

Answer 1

If you're setting DISPLAY then you're overriding ssh's X11 forwarding; ssh sets DISPLAY properly itself with the -X or -Y option (you probably want the latter).

Once you connect, run echo $DISPLAY , you should see 10:0

Beyond that, your attempt to connect X11 directly (don't do that; it's extremely insecure) is likely being dropped by a firewall.

Also, if you are wanting to tunnel http traffic, rather then forwarding firefox, it is better to use port forwarding, ie a socks proxy.

ssh -C2qTnN -D 8080 username@server

See: https://calomel.org/firefox_ssh_proxy.html