X servers for Win & Mac

[nerak99]

I am documenting remote access over at the wiki.

I am including running remote GUI and wanted to know if any windows users out there know of a free X server for Windows. I have seen someone on a Windows machine running an X server which they said was free but I have no idea where they got it from.

Also, I tested the X Server on a Mac (Snow Leopard). Does this come with the Mac or did someone put it on later? If so, where did they get that from?

Thanks

Brian

[soslug]

I would have thought that Cygwin is best placed for that

Cygwin is a set of powerful tools to assist developers in migrating applications from UNIX/Linux to the Microsoft Windows platform. Cygwin delivers the open source standard Red Hat GNU gcc compiler and gdb debugger on Windows. In addition, it provides for a standard UNIX/Linux development environment on Windows including APIs and command shells. The Cygwin.dll library, included with Cygwin, delivers the interesting subset of UNIX SVR4, BSD, and POSIX APIs to enable quick ports of UNIX/Linux applications to the Windows platform.

Red Hat Cygwin is supported on Windows 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista, 2008 Server, 7, and 2008 Server R2. Cygwin is a 32 bit platform that will operate on both 32 and 64 bit Windows installations.

[999frogs]

@nerak99 -

msys/mingw works for me http://www.mingw.org/

[nerak99]

Thanks for those two. The X server is to provide a link from the wiki entry for relative novices. Since I don't use windows myself, I can't test this.

So far as I can tell, http://www.mingw.org/ provides a unix environment for programming in Unix. Does it provide an X server? Can a relatively novice person use it based on the documentation at http://www.mingw.org/?

So far as Cygwin is concerned, I was hoping for something a bit more minimal than a live CD kind of thing which I think is what Cygwin is. The scenario I was hoping for is something like Putty only with an X server.

[soslug]

What about using xhost over ssh if you are using putty then you have what you need to achieve it, there are as far as I am aware some definitions that need be defined on both machines to port the display back to the client machine from remote host.

[krisse7]

For Windows: Xming (http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/). Works great with Putty.

[dom]

So far as Cygwin is concerned, I was hoping for something a bit more minimal than a live CD kind of thing which I think is what Cygwin is.

No, Cygwin is just something you install under windows. Run setup.exe and answer some questions about what to install.
I use Cygwin-X as Windows X server and it works very well (including displaying X windows from Pi).

[nerak99]

I obviously was not completely clear about what I was doing.

Thanks Dom for the Cygwin update, and krissey for the Xming thing. sounds to be examples of what I was looking for. I am wanting to add these to the wiki as i anticipate that most users will be Windows users on their normal machines.

I have now added (and tested on a Rpi) a remote access section to the wiki.
I used the X server on my Linux box (Linux 3.3.7-1.fc16.x86_64 GNU/Linux).

Provided I say "y" to the RSA list on ssh -X .. all the xhost permissions etc is sorted automatically for me.

If you can find a free Xhost for Windows and care to test it and add how to use that to the wiki, it would be very useful.

Similarly for Mac although I am presently looking for my daughters Mac to do that myself.

Thanks, Brian

[nerak99]

I have added those links to the wiki here http://elinux.org/Remote_Access
Any improvements/suggestions would be very useful.

Thank you folks for the info.

Brian

[UnlikelyBarley]

Dom, Are you able to run a full remote desktop using Cygwin?

I have successfully set up ssh on the pi and Cygwin on Windows 7, I can run individual applications in x windows. However I am struggling to get a full desktop up. Using Cygwin Terminal I type

Code: Select all

xwin :0.0 -screen 0 1024 768 -query 192.168.0.76

and I get a 1024x768 X Server window which is blank (black). The Cygwin Terminal shows the following:

Code: Select all

(II) xorg.conf is not supported
(II) See http://x.cygwin.com/docs/faq/cygwin-x-faq.html for more information
LoadPreferences: /home/James/.XWinrc not found
LoadPreferences: Loading /etc/X11/system.XWinrc
LoadPreferences: Done parsing the configuration file...
winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw installed, allowing ShadowDD
winDetectSupportedEngines - Windows NT, allowing PrimaryDD
winDetectSupportedEngines - DirectDraw4 installed, allowing ShadowDDNL
winDetectSupportedEngines - Returning, supported engines 0000001f
winSetEngine - Using Shadow DirectDraw NonLocking
winScreenInit - Using Windows display depth of 32 bits per pixel
winWindowProc - WM_SIZE - new client area w: 1024 h: 768
winFinishScreenInitFB - Masks: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff
MIT-SHM extension disabled due to lack of kernel support
XFree86-Bigfont extension local-client optimization disabled due to lack of shared memory support in the kernel
(EE) AIGLX: No native OpenGL in modes with a root window
(II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized swrast
(II) GLX: Initialized DRISWRAST GL provider for screen 0
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/TTF/, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/OTF/, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/Type1/, removing from list!
winPointerWarpCursor - Discarding first warp: 512 384
(--) 8 mouse buttons found
(--) Setting autorepeat to delay=500, rate=31
(--) Windows keyboard layout: "00000809" (00000809) "United Kingdom", type 7
(--) Found matching XKB configuration "English (United Kingdom)"
(--) Model = "pc105" Layout = "gb" Variant = "none" Options = "none"
Rules = "base" Model = "pc105" Layout = "gb" Variant = "none" Options = "none"
winBlockHandler - pthread_mutex_unlock()

Any ideas?

Ta.

[nerak99]

you are witnessing a Cygwin limitation or possibly your hardware. I suggest you get VirtualBox and run a full version of Linux within it. This should then enable you to do what you want with less work. This is provided you have enough hardware support.

Brian

[UnlikelyBarley]

Thanks Brian, I've run virtual machines before so I'll give that a try. I'm just exploring the possibilities at the moment, no real plan for my Pi yet except to learn new stuff!

James

[jecxjo]

Another Windows option is mobaXterm. It has ssh, telnet, rsh, xdmcp, rdp, vnc support, built in X server and it is a mobile executable so just put it on a usb stick.

http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/

[wallacebiy]

On the Mac , Not sure how current it is , but you might find what you need at PureDarwin
http://www.puredarwin.org/downloads

( for the X stuff they would have implemented X for Darwin , which means it 'should' be easily started in OSX


It's hard to Google "X Server for Mac OSX ", without getting a load of rubbish back ...

[Andre_P]

As to the Mac you just need to go into Applications/Utilities and select X11.
That then runs up and you can then select an xterm.
From there you should be able to ssh -X user@address into the RPi.
I've successfully logged into my RPi using this method on the Mac.
I've got Xeyes running successfully however if you try to run up scratch it just sits there with some errors.
(not at home so I can't advise as to those errors).

Interestingly enough I've been able to get scratch up on my iPad using the iSSH application.
It's a bit slow but it does work.

Good luck

[Joe Schmoe]

X is not installed by default on Mac.

As a result, I never did get around to figuring out what I had to download, etc, to get it working.

[wallacebiy]

meant to post earlier .

Look up http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

they say that as of 10.5 X11 ships with OSX , based on their work .

hope it helps !!

[itimpi]

meant to post earlier .

Look up http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

they say that as of 10.5 X11 ships with OSX , based on their work .

hope it helps !!

Not as I understand their posts. I think that the are saying it run on an OSX 10.6 or later system - not that it includes OSX?

[wallacebiy]

meant to post earlier .

Look up http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

they say that as of 10.5 X11 ships with OSX , based on their work .

hope it helps !!

Not as I understand their posts. I think that the are saying it run on an OSX 10.6 or later system - not that it includes OSX?

Says on that page

Together with supporting libraries and applications, it forms the X11.app that Apple has shipped with OS X since version 10.5.

It may still not be installed by default , but it should be on the system disc...