Launch a GNOME session from terminal

Question

I'm sshing into my friends machine and I'm wondering how would i launch a GNOME session over SSH? I need to open a web browser on his machine to view something which can only be done from his hostname. What's the easiest way to achieve this via SSH?

Answer 1

If all you need to do is run a web session, appearing to come from your friend's computer, I'd suggest just running OpenSSH with the ssh -D8888 argument (8888 is just an example), and set up your local browser to point to localhost:8888 as a SOCKS5 proxy.

If you must run a browser over the link, there's no reason why you need to start up an entire GNOME session, just run ssh -X as described in the other questions, and then run the browser alone.

Answer 2

Switch to a second terminal, for example tty2: CtrlAlt-F2, login and start a new X session on an available display:

xinit -- :1

Now ssh to the other machine, enabling X forwarding (or trusted X forwarding with -Y):

ssh -X user@machine

Once logged in, start a new gnome-session:

gnome-session

You can also pass gnome-session as a command to ssh.

Answer 3

You can use ssh -X or ssh -Y to his machine to run apps on your friend's machine but using your Xorg. The web browser will still be making the connection from his hostname.