[TriLUG] attaching to remote X session (_not_ VNC)

[Aaron Joyner]

Awesome question!  Check out xpra, a modern successor to xmove, as
described here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/27843/redirect-existing-windows-via-ssh-and-x11-forwarding

I found it by searching for "X11 tee redirect" (because "X11 tee" was all
about shirts, and I couldn't remember the correct name of xmove).

http://xpra.org
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xpra

I realize this violates the spirit of one of your constraints, that you
have to think of it in advance, but hopefully like screen (or tmux), if
it's useful enough to you it's just a permanent workflow change rather than
something you wished you'd setup occasionally.

Aaron S. Joyner
On Dec 2, 2013 6:44 PM, "Kevin Hunter Kesling" <hunteke at earlham.edu> wrote:

> Hello TriLUG,
>
> As a matter of (currently) academic curiosity, does anyone know how to
> attach to an already running remote X session?  Or, put differently, since
> X is oriented around an X server (generally the "desktop"), and clients
> that draw to it (e.g., Firefox, Gimp, Xournal, /any/ GUI program), is it
> possible to redirect (or copy) what the remote X server is receiving to a
> local one?  Or some combination, like redirecting a single application to
> another X server?
>
> Every time I google something like this, I come up with solutions like
> "use VNC" which is not what I want.  I specifically want an X solution that
> dynamically changes or copies where visual output goes and from where
> events are received (like keyboard and mouse).
>
> A potential scenario:
>
>   1. I leave a GUI editor open on a machine while at work.
>
>   2. I go home, and realize I forgot to save some buffers.  I want
>      to save those buffers, so that I can continue working where I
>      left off tonight.
>
> To put any workarounds out-of-mind, the exercise is to redirect the GUI to
> my now-local X so that I can interact with it -- without killing-to-reopen
> any applications, or opening new instances.  (Perhaps this GUI editor does
> _not_ have scriptable command line interactions like
> "--save-unsaved-buffers".)  Put differently, the application should be
> oblivious to the fact that the image it is sending to X is going elsewhere.
>
> Again, I'm specifically curious if this is possible with X alone, rather
> than using a workaround like VNC.  In my academic curiosity, a tool that
> tells the X client to change where it's sending data is fine, so long as
> it's not a service-based workaround like VNC, and does not require being
> run before one realizes they want to connect remotely.
>
> Does this make sense?
>
> Kevin
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