X11 in Leopard

With the new Leopard implementation of X11, there appears to be no way to host X11 apps from remote machines that do not allow SSH X11 forwarding. We have all our Solaris systems at work set up with X11 forwarding set to "no", and now I cannot use ANY X11 applications on those remote machines, because I have no normal X11 display on the Mac for them to connect to.

How am I supposed to get these remote systems to use my Mac as an X11 host without SSH forwarding (ie, using plain old X11 withough SSH forwarding)?

Michael Thorn:

Thanks for the additional help! I will try what you suggest this weekend. 🙂

Pasha

Son of a Beach wrote:
With the new Leopard implementation of X11, there appears to be no way to host X11 apps from remote machines that do not allow SSH X11 forwarding. We have all our Solaris systems at work set up with X11 forwarding set to "no", and now I cannot use ANY X11 applications on those remote machines, because I have no normal X11 display on the Mac for them to connect to.

How am I supposed to get these remote systems to use my Mac as an X11 host without SSH forwarding (ie, using plain old X11 withough SSH forwarding)?

You should not need to make any change in your configuration. In addition to listening on the special launchd socket, X11 on Leopard will still listen on 😮 (/tmp/.X11-unix/X0) and localhost:0 (TCP port 6000). You can verify this in the output of 'netstat -a'.
Ben

Well, I only raised it because it simply did not work. On the remote (eg, Solaris or RedHat) hosts I 'setenv DISPLAY macosxhost:0' and any X11 utility I run subsequently fails with X errors.

On the local Mac OS X host, 'xhost remotehost' fails.

Maybe I need to try all this again now that I've disabled the X11 login item (a carry-over from Tiger, which is no longer necessary, and apparently causes problems in Leopard). I'll give it another try when I get back to work.

Message was edited by: Son of a Beach

(Back at work now) Well look at that. It actually works now that I don't have X11 as a Dock item, and don't have it set to start up on login (as I needed to in Tiger).

My X11 is (sort of) working. I have two monitors attached to the box. I cannot move any X11 applications (such as xterm, emacs, xdvi) in the second monitor - they are only crossing in the second monitor for approx. 10% of the width of the monitor.

I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks,
Paul

automat wrote:

bbyer wrote:
It took a little bit of digging, but that Debian patch made it into X.org here: http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/lib/libX11.git;a=commit;h=7dc7ef398b6ad90c cd1680ed9cd1cfdd47312f5a

... which fell between X.org's 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 releases. Leopard shipped with 1.1.2 (which had a bad flaw in it, so I've made available a built version of 1.1.3), so that's one bug that should not be responsible for the problems you're seeing.

That's all, carry on. 🙂
Ben

In the case of Debian based distros, it was necessary to revert to a version of libX11 pre- 1.1.2 release (Debian actually dropped back to 1.0.2, whereas Mandriva rolls back to 1.1.1). So if it is the libX11 patch that's causing the error on Leopard's X11 (as in the case of my linux machines), it would be necessary to build an old version of libX11 for Leopard. On linux, it was possible to downgrade only libX11 without affecting the rest of the Xorg distribution. Would this be even remotely feasible on Leopard?

I know it's inherently stupid to roll back to a broken lib (if its even possible), but it would be a good temporary solution until we can sort out the switch to the IDL 6.4 license server.

Just posting an update. With a bit of help (thanks Ben!), I was able to build an older version of libX11 (version 1.1.1) that fixes the coutour/spectra plotting bus error in IDL 6.3. Just a word of warning--by reverting to version 1.1.1, you lose a buffer overflow patch that was introduced between the 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 versions. It would be best to upgrade to IDL 6.4, which ITTVIS has patched for Leopard (6.4.1, available from the ITTVIS site), or to wait a few months for IDL 7.0.

Gimp is now working on my PPC.

I am a happy camper.

Me too. I just reported bug 5619440 in Apple Radar about it. I also tried using Spaces to move the window. That works -- but then the X server loses all ability to interact with the window, even if you move it back. However, if you switch to another Space first and then open up the X client window, that works.

Dual monitors worked fine with the previous version of X11. Sigh.

Message was edited by: Brian Dantes

hi,
so i just tried the fix that michael thorn posted, but i didn't have an init file to edit, so when i used nano to edit the file nothing came up. i then thought maybe something was wrong with the copy of gimp i'd downloaded, so i downloaded it agin. same problem. i then thought: well ok all the text of the file is right in the post, i'll just make my own file. no luck, anything i've tried to save has ended up as a text file and not a unix executable.
so i'm wondering either how i can create unix files or where did my init file disappear to?

thanks a bunch.

Which version of gimp are you using? The init file is only in 2.4 I think and there are separate instructions for 2.2 and 2.4 in this discussion. Anyway, if you don't have it you don't need it. Regardless of all this talk, you may want to check out the website:

http://www.wilber-loves-apple.org/

Wilber has made available modified versions of gimp and has simplified the installation some. Give it a try, and if you are still having trouble let us know. Be sure to tell us which version of gimp and what chipset you are using (intel or ppc).

thanks a bunch for replying so soon. i've got an intel chip (i thought the stuff i entered when i setup my account about what computer i was using would show up) and i've been trying to use the gimp 2.4.2.
i just went and got the latest xquartz from macosforge, and i had the latest gimp from wilber-loves-apple. however, when i tried installing with the xquartz pkg i got an error: INSTALL FAILED the following install step failed: run postupgrade script for x11. contact the software manufacturer for assistance. i've got no clue what to do.

thanks tremendously.

FIrst for everyone out there... my solutions should be viewed as a last resort now as others have made it much easier for everyone by supplying installers and such. For Gimp go too wilber-loves-apple and get the latest version matching your computer's specs. For the X11 patches that make it A LOT more useable go to here and follow the instructions.

Zenbunny,

The instructions I gave only work with the Gimp versions straight from gimp not from the wilber loves mac page. No modifications are required for the ones from wilber. The fact that the xquartz package is failing is not a good sign. I have used the latest version 2.2.0.1 from the site above and it worked fine for me. So, I guess what I would start with is reinstalling X11 from the DVD. If you are good with the command line you could try and install each part one at a time. You should definitely join the X11-User mailing list and ask there. They are a pretty smart group and most likely one of them could help you, and it would make the software better in the future. One of the people on the group is responsible for creating the package you are having trouble with.

I believe that's probably it. Last.fm doesn't quite work right on Leopard; when it tries to open at login it hangs and stays hidden in the background until you use Activity Monitor to kill it. Even worse, this background Last.fm process doesn't appear to do anything. I have my Last.fm set to open with iTunes, and it opens fine when I open iTunes (except it has a Dock icon, even though it is set not to).

Conclusion: Last.fm hangs on some launches but not others, and has a Dock icon when it shouldn't. Also it bothers X11.app.