X Forwarding with Putty on Windows

Intro to X Forwarding

Unix machines have been able to run software on a remote machine and display the GUI locally for almost two decades. Linux and Mac OS X support X Forwarding with no extra software. Any terminal on Linux should do X Forwarding, Mac users need to run "Applications > Utilities > XTerm". In a command line terminal run "ssh -Y jdoe@compute.example.edu matlab" and you'll be running matlab on "compute.example.edu" but seeing it on your desktop.

Windows users need two pieces of software: an secure shell program (ssh) to establish the remote connection and an X Server to handle the local display.

Prerequisites

• Putty for SSH
• XWin32, or XMing with Portable PuTTY for the XServer

Configuring Putty

1. Add Unix hostname
2. Switch Protocol to SSH
3. Type name of session in saved sessions
4. Click 'Save'





5. Choose 'Tunnels' from 'Category' list
6. Check 'Enable X11 Forwarding'





7. Choose 'Session' from 'Category' list
8. Click 'Save'

Starting the X Server on Windows

Configuring XWin-32

1. Start XWin-32
2. Click 'Security' tab
3. Click 'Add...'
4. Enter 'localhost' without quotes and click 'OK'

Configuring Xming

Just run "All Programs > Xming Xming" and it should work if you've got PuTTY configured.

Connecting

1. Start XWin32
2. Start Putty
3. Double click on the saved session you want





4. Enter username and password as requested
5. You should now be able to run X applications from the host
   on your local desktop

Fonts

Some older versions of XWin32 require fonts to be install to run certain programs, such as Mathematica

They can be found here.

William S. Bear
v1.1
Feb 27, 2006