Remote client accounts

[Russell Shaw]

Hi,
With X11, if a user uses X clients on a remote host, does the
user need an account on the remote host?

[The Ghost In The Machine]

In comp.windows.x, Russell Shaw
<***@s_pam.netspace.net.au>
wrote
on Sun, 21 Aug 2005 20:20:15 +1000

Post by Russell Shaw
Hi,
With X11, if a user uses X clients on a remote host, does the
user need an account on the remote host?

Yes (sort of), as a program needs to run on the remote host.

A more or less typical -- or at least somewhat secure
-- setup would install sshd on the remote system
and ssh on the local one. Then one can fire up an
xterm/gnome-terminal/kterminal/whatever on the local system
(the one running the X server) and type in

$ ssh -XY remotehost

This will give the user a shell prompt, and he can then simply
type in the X-using command he wants.

If one does not desire a shell account, one can play some interesting
games by setting the shell of the account on remotehost to be
the program one wants to run. However, there's some issues
regarding authorization that may have to be adjusted in that case;
I'd have to play with it myself to see how well that works.

A shell account with a custom .bash_profile works but I'm not sure
how secure that is, as control-C can interrupt it.