Re: [lmi] GUI on corporate server? [Was: Using Git submodules for the dependencies]

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Tue, 13 Oct 2020 20:52:54 +0000 Greg Chicares <gchicares@sbcglobal.net> 
wrote:

GC> I'd like to reopen this discussion, because it's really inconvenient
GC> to use this corporate server without any GUI:
GC>  - can't run any decent file manager

 Back when I was addicted to file managers, I used to run Midnight
Commander which seemed decent enough and didn't require any GUI, so perhaps
it could be used as a fallback?

GC>  - can't run lmi's automated GUI tests
GC>  - can't run lmi's own GUI under 'wine'

 I think both of these could be addressed by using xvfb. This is what I use
for running GUI tests in the CI builds and it works reasonably well,
although there are sometimes some weird problems that only happen under
xvfb or, worse, that don't happen under it. But this is pretty rare. And
using xvfb may be interesting even if you're using a real X server because
you can run the tests inside it without interfering with your normal
session, i.e. continue using your mouse and keyboard while they run.

GC> Even if the requirement of a VPN turns out to prevent accessing this
GC> server from a non-corporate PC, shouldn't it be somehow possible to
GC> get an XWindow GUI running on a corporate msw-10 PC that is already
GC> set up to access the linux server?

 In principle, sure, I do it all the time. The only question if there are
no policies in place to prevent you from doing it.

GC> Right now, we're using
GC>  - putty for a terminal
GC>  - winscp for file transfers via SFTP
GC> This article:
GC>   
https://superuser.com/questions/119792/how-to-use-x11-forwarding-with-putty
GC> suggests that we'd need to
GC>  - get an msw-based X server, which I'm sure we could get; and
GC>  - enable X11 forwarding in putty, which I had thought was blocked,
GC>    but following the screenshot in the above article I see that it
GC>    is available
GC> Is it as easy as that sounds?

 I use Cygwin X server and connect to it "manually", i.e. setting
DISPLAY=msw-box-address:0 under Linux. I could use X11 forwarding, of
course, but I consider my LAN safe enough to use for running wxWidgets
samples over unencrypted connection. So, in principle, this is even easier
than what you describe.

 Of course, I do have administrator permissions on my machine and can
allow the incoming X connections in the MSW built-in firewall. If you can't
do this, you would indeed need to use ssh X forwarding. But this really
should work, AFAICS.

 Good luck,
VZ

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