[lug] ssh -X question

[Hugh Brown]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 07:00:47AM -0600, Kenneth D Weinert wrote:
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> I'm a bit confused.  I was under the impression that if I ssh into a
> different machine with the X forwarding option that any program I ran
> would run *on that machine* and the display would be redirected to the
> machine I logged in from.
> 
> This appears to be true for everything *except* my browser. Well,
> firefox at any rate.
> 
> I have a new  64 bit laptop and the VPN from work doesn't support
> that, so I ssh into the older desktop and fire up the browser to start
> the VPN.
> 
> However, that doesn't work as the browser appears to want to start up
> things on my local machine.
> 
> I had the same browser issue with trying to configure CUPS -
> localhost:631 from the remoted browser shows the configuration on the
> local machine.
> 
> Is the browser/firefox just a special case?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Ken


I've had the issue where firefox tries to be too clever and does a "hey, is firefox running? Yes? Okay, I'll just attach to that process."  It has always seemed to be worse on Redhat and derivatives (e.g. firefox -P otherprofile on a Redhat box will open up in the running profile).

Try closing out of firefox on your local box and then re-run firefox on the remote box.

Hugh