Remote Access through X11

XWindow forwarding

visual

Author

Hongyang Zhou

Published

October 25, 2019

Mac

When you ssh to a remote server, you may need to open graphic software through x11. Check the following things to avoid the displaying error X11 forwarding request failed on channel 0:

ssh -X user@server or ssh -Y user@server
On local machine, modify the X11forwarding to yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config
in /etc/ssh/ssh_config, add XAuthLocation /usr/X11/bin/xauth (The location of xauth may change from version to version!)

WSL2

WSL2 requires XWindow for GUI applications. This guide provides a good summary of how to set it up on your Win10. I have only tried the first option VcXsrv Windows X Server, which works great but I have to remember to launch it with the correct settings everytime before I start a GUI from WSL2.

Update: As of 2024, WSL2 comes with GUI support. However, the biggest issue with WSL2 is that it lacks a robust way to release unused memory to the system, which in the long run causes OOM errors.