4.5 Remote Display

Normally, SCIRun's main window is displayed on a console that is part of the computer on which SCIRun runs. It is possible, however, to display SCIRun on a remote console. In the discussion that follows, the term local refers to the machine running SCIRun and the term remote refers to the machine displaying SCIRun.

To display SCIRun remotely, the value of the DISPLAY environment variable must be set correctly on the local machine. Also, the local machine must be allowed to send display commands to the remote machine.

Normally, the remote machine makes a connection to the local machine via the ssh command. In this case, ssh sets the value of DISPLAY in such a way that the local machine has permission to send display commands to the remote machine. However, ssh connections result in poor display performance because of encryption activity on the connection.

To increase performance, the value of DISPLAY is set as follows after establishing the ssh connection:

for a sh-style shell

  export DISPLAY=remote-machine-name:0.0

for a csh-style shell

  setenv DISPLAY remote-machine-name:0.0

Note that this technique defeats the encryption protection on the connection.

After overriding the value of DISPLAY set by ssh, the local machine will lack permission to send display commands to the remote machine. Use the xhost command on the remote machine to give permission to the local machine:

  xhost +local-machine-name