Hi: I did some experiments with running UNIX laptops in adhoc mode and projecting X apps from one to the other. I thought I would send in what I did in light of the previous interest about VPN and Linux thin clients.
I had an OpenBSD laptop and a FreeBSD laptop. Here is what I did to get the FreeBSD laptop to use the X applications from the OpenBSD laptop. On the OpenBSD laptop I did this: $ /usr/bin/sudo ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.0.4 netmask 255.255.255.0 nwid cwelug mediaopt adhoc and on the FreeBSD laptop I did: # ifconfig wi0 inet 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 ssid cwelug mediaopt adhoc NOTE: the laptops cannot be connected to any other network for this adhoc mode to work. Also note that "nwid" is a synonym for "ssid". I had the appropriate entries in my /etc/hosts files. For FreeBSD that would be: 127.0.0.1 mobile.silbsd.org localhost.silbsd.org localhost 192.168.0.3 mobile.silbsd.org mobile 192.168.0.4 notebook.silbsd.org notebook notebook is the OpenBSD laptop and mobile is the FreeBSD laptop. I ran an X session on the FreeBSD laptop, then opened an Xterm and did as an ordinary user: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ssh -X [EMAIL PROTECTED] I discovered the following: 1) From the Xterm that I initiated the X enabled ssh connection I could "background" many applications and run them simultaneously. It looked like this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ssh -X [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]'s password: Last login: Mon Aug 29 18:27:23 2005 from mobile.silbsd.org OpenBSD 3.6-stable (GENERIC) #5: Sat Jul 9 07:54:17 MDT 2005 Welcome to OpenBSD: The proactively secure Unix-like operating system. Please use the sendbug(1) utility to report bugs in the system. Before reporting a bug, please try to reproduce it with the latest version of the code. With bug reports, please try to ensure that enough information to reproduce the problem is enclosed, and if a known fix for it exists, include that as well. $ gnumeric & [1] 29884 $ /home/xfce/docs/spreadsheets/checking2005.gnumeric $ octave & [2] 13200 $ jobs [2] + Stopped (tty output) octave [1] - Running gnumeric $ xterm -e octave & [3] 18231 $ /home/xfce/docs/BSDCert/survey/SPREADSHT_ALL_MS2KXLS.gnumeric /home/xfce/docs/BSDCert/survey/SPREADSHT_ALL_MS2KXLS.gnumeric /home/xfce/docs/BSDCert/EnglishSurveyResults.xls [3] - Done xterm -e octave $ 2) I found that if I opened a file manager I could click on the files and they would open with the appropriate application. 3) I opened two large Gnumeric spreadsheets and four instances of Gimp. Each Gimp loaded a large digital camera picture. I found that Gimp was pretty responsive when doing editing operations and zooming the large digital jpegs. 4) I then ran GMplayer from the server laptop and found that it would play the movies but that they were in slow motion. 5) I tried to drag n' drop from a GUI file manager on the server to the same type of GUI file manager on the client but drag n' drop did not work. 6) I could copy and paste between applications on the client and server. Actually I only tried tried this between two Vi editors. One was on the client and one was on the server. I ran top on the client laptop (the FreeBSD one) and the memory consumption was quite low: last pid: 255; load averages: 0.04, 0.08, 0.03 up 0+00:29:13 20:44:39 44 processes: 1 running, 43 sleeping CPU states: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 0.5% interrupt, 99.5% idle Mem: 28M Active, 13M Inact, 19M Wired, 24K Cache, 17M Buf, 92M Free Swap: 304M Total, 304M Free PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND 190 bsd 2 0 21024K 15204K select 0:19 1.42% 1.42% XFree86 255 bsd 28 0 1996K 1220K RUN 0:00 2.69% 0.49% top 220 bsd 2 0 2864K 2360K select 0:06 0.05% 0.05% ssh 231 bsd 2 0 2844K 2304K select 0:06 0.00% 0.00% ssh I think this method is viable alternative to projecting the entire desktop from the server onto it's clients. -- Kind regards, Jonathan _______________________________________________ CWE-LUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.cwelug.org/ http://www.cwelug.org/archives/ http://www.cwelug.org/mailinglist/
