KATZ@VENERA.ISI.EDU (Alan R. Katz) (04/18/87)
Question:
When I want to run an xterm on a remote machine, I must somehow tell the
remote machine to create and run a process running xterm, with the DISPLAY
set to my workstation. I currently do this with rsh under unix.
It seems to me there must be a better way to do this. What if the remote
machine were not a unix machine. Is there a defined way under X to request
a remote machine to initiate an X program directed to a particular workstation?
Alan
-------haynes@DECWRL.DEC.COM.UUCP (04/18/87)
You are talking about remote initiation of programs. If you reflect upon the problem for a moment, you will realize that there is no way for "X" to request remote initiation of programs, unless there is some sort of "X" agent already running on that system. The remote initiation problem isn't something that X should address. It's already addressed by the rsh "protocol" under unix, but it is a strictly operating system dependent problem (at this time). Can you think of a way that you'd like to have it done? Remember "there is no magic", in particular how do you propose to tell arbirtrary operating systems over arbitrary communication protocols to remotely initiate an arbitrary user process in some arbitrary context (environment/search path/etc.)? Don't forget to authenticate the requestor. If you postulate a user agent on the remote system, and define a protocol to it you can solve the problem, but it is a separate solution, and not part of X. The X protocol (wisely) doesn't touch this can of worms. -- Charles