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

[Reginald Reed]

Thanks for this Aaron, I was unaware of this project, I'll be playing
with this tonight :)

On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 6:59 PM, Aaron Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws> wrote:
> 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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