Enabling X11 forwarding on Linux

To enable GUIs on LINUX you have to setup X11 forwarding with putty. The instructions below are for Windows.

At the OS level confirm that the X11FORWARDING has been set to YES in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. This might vary depending upon your linux distro. the below screens are from SUSE Linux 12

You will require

1. XMING server – download from https://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/. Choose the defaults during installation. Make sure the XMING server is running.

. Configure putty to use X11 forwarding

leave the remote X11 authentication protocol as the MIT-magic-Cookie-1

Check if you have xeyes by typing ‘xeyes’. if not Install xeyes. Not mandatory but useful in troubleshooting. Download from https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=openSUSE%3ALeap%3A42.1&package=xeyes

Now if everything is right – typing xeyes on your putty prompt should bring up the ROLLING eyes

Now often after logging in to linux – folks have to do a sudo and if you try xeyes after a sudo you get

this error is because the display is not available after sudo and you have to export it. Check the value of $DISPLAY within sudo

get out of sudo and check the value of $DISPLAY.

get back in and export  $DISPLAY

now the error has change to authorization. this is because the xauths magic cookies are not available within sudo. so one or two more steps

Do an xauth list while in sudo

here since the xauth file does not exist. We have to create it first. This can be accomplished by a simple touch command. Then we add the xauth to this while in sudo.

add the complete MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 available outside of sudo within sudo  using the xauth add ‘cookie’ command

finally we are ready to run xeyes again

Once this works – you should be able to invoke all BI/HANA shell scripts which can give you a GUI. You may need GTK2 fonts too if there are further issues with invoking BI clients. talk to your linux administrator about those if you get an error…however you should be good with X11 forwarding with the above.