GNU Screen for X11 Forwarding

Question

I'm using X11 forwarding over ssh to run Linux apps on my Windows box, and when the network drops the lose everything that was running. Is there anything similar to screen for X11?

Answer 1

Xpra claims to be exactly that:

So basically it's screen for remote X apps.

I haven't used it in a while, but it worked pretty well when I tried it. You start the server on the remote machine:

[remote] $ xpra start :13

Then you attach to the server from your local machine:

[local] $ xpra attach ssh:remote:13

And now anything displayed on X display 13 on the remote machine will appear locally:

[remote] $ DISPLAY=:13 xeyes

Answer 2

You're looking for VNC. The principle somewhat is similar to screen: you run a VNC server (the backgound SCREEN process), and a VNC client (the foreground screen process). The VNC server is an X server, so you can run X applications in it.

Run a VNC server on the Linux box and a client on the Windows box. You have several implementations to choose from; one possibility is TightVNC. TightVNC is in many Linux distributions (if it's not in yours, either install it or pick a different implementation), and there's a Windows client.

If your two machines aren't very close on the network — if there's a firewall or a risk of eavesdropper between them — you'll need to tunnel the VNC traffic through ssh. Have ssh forward the local port 5900 to the remote port 5900 (5900 corresponds to the display :0, use 5901 for `:1, etc.).