Is there a way to have programs invoked from a PuTTy session display in the TV? I remember Unix has a $DISPLAY variable that can be set, in the format hostname:0, but I forgot how to do it... I tried using the command "env DISPLAY=[the hostname of my box]:0" , but it didn't work.

I connect to the box from an XP machine, but when I try to run a program like Xmame (even to see the options) it quits with the error "cannot open display". If there was a way to somehow redirect the display to the TV, then it should work... I also have the same problem when I open a shell console (Ctrl+Alt+F1), but I guess in that case the main display is taken by text...

_________________
Don't panic!

you can do what i did, and install the vncserver and just start a vnc session, that way you can do things from another computer. not what your looking for, but its another way

You're trying to get the display for you boxen to display on XP? This will not work, unless to install Cygwin or Exceed or something that allows the use of X on Windows.

_________________
cesman

When the source is open, the possibilities are endless!

No, I think he is trying to launch the program from a remote telnet session and get it to display on the TV / X display.

_________________
Paul Turpie
-------------
<--Is your location in your profile? Why not?

Both are fine, I just want to be able to run programs that look for a display, when launching them from my XP machine. I suppose the easiest would be to use KnoppMyth's main display (TV). It doesn't have to be fast or anything, this is just for debugging purposes and allow me to quickly test if a set of command line parameters are working.

_________________
Don't panic!

Ah! I've had this problem...

Answer: DON'T DO IT AS ROOT...

For some reason, I was unable to X display stuff when running as root, but switching to mythtv user did the trick...

Here is a quick output:

yes by default debian does not allow one user to dispay anything on another users X session for security purposes.

_________________
Have a question search the forum and have a look at the KnoppMythWiki.

Xsecrets

Well, the general way to do this (redirecting the X display onto a remote machine is like so:

on the machine you want it to appear on (assuming it's running X): xhost +IP , where IP is the IP addy or hostname of the machine that you want to shoot you the output

On the source machine, redirect the display to a remote machine that you ran the xhost command on like so:

export DISPLAY=IP:0.0 , where IP is the remote machine.

Display must be in caps. Double check by typing "echo $DISPLAY". Some shells (sh) need 2 commands: DISPALY=...
and then "export DISPLAY" to be typed in.

Thanks for the answers! Unfortunately it's still not working... I tried both ways, but both fail saying that they can't open the display. I tried with hostnames and IP addresses of the KnoppMyth box, and both fail.

I did two su - mythtv (just in case, the second time it asked for a password), set DISPLAY to either the hostname and the IP, and tried to set xhost for my WinXP machine's IP and then the KnoppMyth box. Both xterm and xhost commands failes with a "can't open display" command.

Am I missing something? I though declaring an xhost would allow opening the display remotely, but maybe I'm not doing it right. I'm not doing it under Cygwin for the moment, so it should appear on the TV.

Edit: I found in a page mention that there's a need to open an SSH connection for X. So I tried the following... it didn't work, but it may give a clue to what's needed:

If I change the DISPLAY variable to [hostname]:0.0, then I just get the same old "Cannot open display" error...

_________________
Don't panic!

This is how it works on Fedora Core 2 (need to test it on KnoppMyth):
1) On the Myth Server (frontend):


On Fedora you get:
:0.0

2) On the PuTTy session:
#export DISPLAY=[response_from_Myth_server]

For me it was:


If this works tell me

That did the trick! Thanks a lot!

_________________
Don't panic!