term
term
allows users to open up X windows on the local machine
from clients that are running on a machine on the network. This is
done by using the txconn
client. txconn
is
executed on the remote, network-connected machine, it is invoked
simply as txconn.
It goes into the background and returns a
number on the standard output, this number is the display number that
clients should use to access the X server on the local machine. An
example should make this clear. I am logged in, via trsh,
to my remote term
host, named foo.
On foo,
I do the following
foo$ txconn Xconn bound to screen 10 :10 foo$
Now, on any host that I wish to run an X client, that is to display on
my local machine's X server, I do setenv DISPLAY
foo:10
. Now when I start the client, it will try to connect to
screen 10 on machine foo,
but txconn
is listening to
this screen, and will forward all X protocol packets via term
to the X server on the local host - i.e. the window will open
up on your local machine.
It is possible to go the other way - run a client on your local
machine and have it open up a window on a remote machine on the
network, however we will defer explaining this until after we have
discussed tredir.
txconn
is not terribly secure, anyone can connect to your
local server via term
and perform all sorts of mischief. If
you're worried about this sort of thing, it might be a good idea to
consider using xauth
to authorize your connections. Consult
the xauth
man page.
The X protocol is not very efficient, it wastes some bandwidth. This
is usually not a problem over an ethernet, but can be murder over a
modem. X11R6 is supposed to introduce a low bandwidth version of the X
protocol, LBX. However, this is not of much use, since R6 has not been
released at the time of this writing. There is a utility named sxpc
which compresses the X protocol, improving response over
serial lines. sxpc
includes a writeup on how to get it
working with term,
and is recommended. You can get sxpc
from ftp.x.org
in /contrib.
The sxpc
package also explains how to use xauth,
so it is
doubly recommended.