firefox&thunderbird remote launch troubles

[Mike Wright]

Hi all,

I routinely connect to remote machines using this command: "ssh -Y 
remoteHost".  This allows a graphical program to run remotely but 
display locally.  I've been using this on my laptop fc4 to connect to my 
workstation fc4.  Everything stays on the workstation.  No problem.

I recently installed fc6 on two different machines with similar hardware 
capabilities.   One is running the stock 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen kernel, 
and the other vanilla 2.6.18.2.  They seem to behave similarly except 
for the "ssh -Y remoteHost", where they behave _very_ differently.

Remote programs still run there and display here _except_ firefox and 
thunderbird.  This is where it becomes very strange.

If firefox is running locally and I try to run firefox remotely I get 
two different results.  Vanilla kernel causes 70 seconds of network 
traffic and finally stops with firefox running nowhere.  Remote "ps" 
shows it doing a remote ping and trying to launch but eventually dies a 
quiet death.  On stock kernel it very quickly launches another copy of 
the local firefox.

If firefox is not running locally the vanilla kernel still tries for 70 
seconds and aborts without logging or complaining, but the stock kernel 
will run firefox remotely and display here as expected.  If firefox is 
running remotely but displaying locally and I try to launch a local copy 
of firefox it runs another copy remotely and displays that one here, too.

On to thunderbird.  Vanilla kernel will eventuall launch remotely and 
display locally, but so slowly as to be unuseable (think 110 baud 
modems), displaying, disappearing, reappearing, requesting 
configuration, then blowing it away.  After about a half hour of it 
still not coming up all the way I gave up.  On the stock kernel it works 
beautifully.

I haven't got a clue how to troubleshoot this.  Since everything else 
seems to work properly it points to firefox and thunderbird.  I don't 
know if it is kernel related.  The fact that nothing is logged on either 
end at any time doesn't help, nor does the diversity of results.

Note that I'm using both fc6 boxes successfully, one as a workstation 
and one as a server.  It is only using firefox or thunderbird *remotely* 
that things go crazy.

Any insights from anybody?  Should this be bugzilla'd (or should I be)?

Thanks,
Mike Wright