X server not reponding

[Walter Francis]

Sorry, I haven't read all the responses so far, here's my list of
suggestions/comments.

By default for some years now, the TCP port has been disabled for X,
instead it's suggested one use ssh tunneling.  This is set in the
/etc/X11/xdm/Xservers file, most likely has --nolisten tcp on the
X line.

The better solution is to just use ssh by calling ssh -Y machine,
which sets up a tunnel which should give you a display variable.  The
only reason you should have to manually set a display variable is if
you're using X over TCP instead of over ssh.

In case you're wondering about ssh -X vs -Y, I don't know.  I do know
that -X seems to time out after a few minutes, so if you ssh -X machine,
then 10 minutes later decide to run something, the tunnel no longer
works.  ssh -Y seems perminant.  Perhaps that is why it's called "trusted".

If you can ssh into the machine, you can run applications over it, no
additional ports are used.  So..

localmachine# ssh -Y remotemachine
user/login
remotemachine# firefox

And it'll work, firefox will come up on localmachine.  I can't imagine
why it wouldn't.