Solved Re: vpnc & X Apps

[Paul R. Ganci]

Paul R. Ganci wrote:

> I am using VPNC to connect to my employer's network of SUN solaris 
> systems. I can login into the Sun workstation on my desk at work with 
> no problems. However if I try to open an X application on my home 
> system from my workstation I keep getting:
>
> Error: Can't open display:  vpn226.myworkdomain.com:0.0
>
> DNS is working properly since vpn226.myworkdomain.com resolves to 
> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx which also happens to be the IP address assigned to 
> device tun. The solaris box on my desk is using the csh shell so on my 
> workstation I did:
>
> setenv DISPLAY vpn226.myworkdomain.com:0.0
>
> and on my home PC:
>
> xhost xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
>
> Clearly I am missing something. Do I have to open something up on my 
> firewall in addition to the usual VPN ports? I need to be able to open 
> some X apps on my home PC for it to be of use. Any help is, of course, 
> greatly appreciated. Thanks.
>
The problem is that the X server was started with -nolisten TCP. Since 
the Solaris box doesn't have SSH installed I can't open a window on the 
home FC2 system utilizing X forwarding. Hence I had to set 
DisallowTCP=false in gdm.conf in order to remove the -nolist TCP 
control. This is not the ideal solution albeit I have ports 6000 and 177 
shutdown at the firewall. I am having my Sys. Admin. at work install SSH 
and then I should be able to go back to -noliste TCP and still have 
everything work correctly.

-- 
Paul (ganci at nurdog.com)