Here are some notes on setting up PuTTY to allow X11 forwarding to Xming, ultimately also using sudo.
Ensure the servers you are connecting to have “X11Forwarding yes” set in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Restart ssh if necessary.
Starting with PuTTY, after you have already set up the Session connection stuff and know you can ssh to the target, in the configuration under Connection
-> SSH
-> X11
-> tick Enable X11 forwarding
-> leave X display local blank
-> tick MIT-Magic-Cookie-1
-> leave X authority for local display blank
Save your putty session.
Start XLaunch
-> Multiple windows
-> Display number : 10
-> Next
-> Start no client
-> Next
-> Clipboard, Native opengl & Disable access control all ticked
-> Next
-> Finish
Now make the Putty connection to the target and you should be able to run xclock to test.
To sudo to root and be able to run X apps:
Run “xauth list” and you should see a list of one or more cookies. Find the one labelled MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 that has the corresponding display number. For example:
sparticus/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 1ccb738692bac9383747ff |
Now “sudo su -” to get root access (I’m assuming sudo is already setup to allow this). Then run
xauth add sparticus/unix:10 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 1ccb738692bac9383747ff export DISPLAY=localhost:10.0 |
You should again be able to run an X application like xclock.
If you need to ssh to other servers from your initial PuTTY session and be able to run X11 apps, use ssh -XY [servername] to ensure X11 is forwarded.
