Cygstart through SSH tunnel

[Andrew DeFaria]

On 02/04/2011 10:00 PM, davej1983 wrote:
> Hi, I'm fairly new to Cygwin, so this might be a pretty simple question, but
> so far I haven't had any luck finding an answer so far.
>
> I have an SSH server running on a remote computer, that I can log into using
> cygwin. While logged, if I use cygstart to try to open a file, or if I try
> to launch a program, it will not fully open/launch. For example, if I try to
> open a text file, notepad.exe will show up in the task manager, but won't
> actually open. Does anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong? Any help
> would be appreciated!
You're making the invalid assumption that Microsoft wrote a network 
aware windowing system. They didn't! It quite simply just doesn't work 
that way. There are no concepts like an X server, a display or the 
concept of saying "run this gui client here on this machine, but display 
it's window on another display". Indeed Windows just blindly assumes 
that you are logged in and present at the current machines physical 
CRT... oops - showing my age - monitor and (guessing here) that the 
appropriate structures are on the heap to put up this notepad.exe window 
on the current machine (in your example, the remote computer - which 
then fails, leaving notepad running but no visible window to interact with.

You might want to try installing Cygwin/X and using a true X server and 
X clients.
-- 
Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
One-seventh of your life is spent on Monday.


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