Broken X11 connections from remote machines

Create a new account and see if you have the same problem there. X11 problems are usually related to custom X11 configurations or hacking up of the X11 code itself.

Hi Josh,

I am also having the same problem as you. I use ssh with -X to log into a remote machine, and lately (since Lion) it has been exiting with the same error. I find it is usually a time issue, where it will work everytime I need it to when I first log-in but then at some point it fails.

I have used the same configuration since Tiger with no problems, but it is consistent with Lion. I don't know of any solutions other than just logging off and logging back in... but this isn't really ideal.

I haven't made any configuration changes to X11 that I know of.

--Jeff--

I am experiencing this exact same issue (Broken X11 connection after 5-10 minutes). Works fine under Snow Leopard, but not Lion.

No special X configurations, just the plain vanilla default (on both Lion and Snow Leopard machines). If anyone knows of a way to fix (or at least band-aid it), please let us know!

Exactly the same problem here. Does anyone have any hints on how to tackle this problem?

I'll just add another data point - I'm having the exact same problem in the exact same conditions.

I recall someone reporting this in the past couple months, but that thread died down. That reporter said that the existing connections still worked. Is that the same for you (ie: if you have an xterm open, it stays open and responsive, but you can't create a new one)? If that's the case, this has nothing to do with X11 and is probably a bug in sshd on the remote machine.

--Jeremy

Apparently the solution to this problem is to use

ssh -Y

when connecting to the remote machine instead of

ssh -X

see http://lists.apple.com/archives/X11-users/2011/Sep/msg00011.html

this has to do with openssh bug 1785

http://lists.mindrot.org/pipermail/openssh-bugs/2010-June/009251.html

which was resolved in openssh 5.6 (included in Lion)

The solution was found by Greig Cowan, and the problem diagnosed by Adrian Umpleby.

The original poster mentioned that they were experiencing this with ssh -Y.

my .ssh/config line looks like this:

ForwardAgent yes

ForwardX11 yes

ForwardX11Timeout 8h

The default timeout is 20minutes (see "man ssh_config").

I also am having issues.

No one have any ideas?

Seems like it always worked on my Windows box using third-party app.

Have NEVER been able to do this reliable on OS X.

I have spen many hours trying to get OS X (Lion and Lepord) to work with remote hosts.

I have tried all kinds of things including ssh -y none of them work.

If I

ssh -y root@remotelinuxhost

And get to a prompt.

Run:

xeyes &

I get:

DISPLAY is not set

I set the display as:

DISPLAY=10.1.52.188:0

export DISPLAY

(Which I understood should NOT be necessary with ssh -y)

xeyes &

No protocol specified

Error: Can't open display: 10.1.52.188:0

Running form a session on my local machine seems to work fine.

xeyes &

All seems to work.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

-jim

X connection to localhost:10.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

I think I would be looking on at the server logs: /var/log/secure to see if they have anything useful sshd messages.

Then I might be looking at playing with some server side /etc/ssh/sshd_config file entries.

ssh -y root@remotelinuxhost

ssh lowercase -y is NOT the same as ssh capital -Y. Was that a typo on your part? They again, since you are getting "DISPLAY is not set" would explain that you were NOT using capital -Y, which forwards your current system's X11 display to the remote.

With Mac OS X you should NEVER manually set your DISPLAY environment variable, neither on the Mac, nor in a remote system's shell initialization files (unless you really know what you are doing on X-Windows). You should use ssh -Y (or ssh -X) to forward you Mac OS X X11 display to the remote system.

I had the exact same problem, but fixed it by setting

ForwardX11Timeout 596h

in my ~/.ssh/config, where 596h is the highest time limit possible.

Here's the link to the solution:

http://b.kl3in.com/2012/01/x11-display-forwarding-fails-after-some-time/