[lug] ssh -X question

[Michael Hirsch]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 7:00 AM, Kenneth D Weinert
<kenw at quarter-flash.com> 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?

Yeah, firefox is special.  I think it is trying to use a currently
running instance of firefox.

I think you might be able to have firefox use a different profile, but
I've never figured that out.

Alternatively, use another browser.  Konqueror works great for pages
without lots of javascript.  Opera is pretty functional, too.

Michael