Help a Linux Nubee - RedHat GUI

[Earl Bonovich]

Okay.... along with my recent iMAC purchase (which I hooked up last night, and it is going to be an intresting experience.. :) )

Work is moving the ERP and backend systems for our main applications to LINUX based servers.

Now I am getting pretty decent with the command line stuff... but it are things related to issolated tasks...

We are now setting up a new server for ourselves (a consulting firm helped with the first 4)....

Used the Dell installation helper disk, with RedHat Enterprise Linux v4.
That all went fine... system is up.. running... I can telnet in, I can vnc in, ect...

BUT.... I absolutely can not find out how to start the GUI interface for the system.

Most of the documentation I am finding on RedHat's site on how to do most admin tasks, show it from a GUI interface.... and I am just at a loss on how to get that going.

It has been a long time since I have been in a "unix" enviornment, and that was always command line based.

So can someone point me at a reference/FAQ ect... that can help me get the GUI going on RedHat Linux 4 Enterprise... so I can access it either from the console, or even remotely on my Windows desktop.

I fully understand the concepts of X-Windows as that hasn't really changed since when I first started with the enviorments back in school... so I m not that much of a "nubee".... But it is like a needle in a haystack... and I ust want to find a small thread that will help me get to the point.

[Stuart Sweet]

I'm more of a noob than you but I know two things on my Linux install:

Ctrl-Alt-7 (might be Ctrl-7 on yours) starts up in the GUI. Ctrl-Alt-1 is pure text.

Also I think the command you're looking for might be "startx".

[Earl Bonovich]

I'm more of a noob than you but I know two things on my Linux install:

Ctrl-Alt-7 (might be Ctrl-7 on yours) starts up in the GUI. Ctrl-Alt-1 is pure text.

Also I think the command you're looking for might be "startx".

I will give t a shot.

Right now all I have is a text session...

[phat78boy]

I like to use linux.org when I'm need of a quick command. They have a large "how-to" list that I find very helpful. You can find it here. (http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/HOWTO-INDEX/index.html)

[Earl Bonovich]

startx worked great, from the server console.... got me the full GUI that I was looking for.

Now.... how do I do that, and have that GUI display on my Windows desktop.

I have already installed an XWindows client... and got XTERM to work and display... but I can't get the same thing I was getting with startx

[Stuart Sweet]

Way beyond me... happy I could help with the other thing though.

[bobnielsen]

A long time ago I used VNC to get the Linux GUI on a Windows box (and vice versa). The X server needs to be running first, however. There is probably a way to get Red Hat to boot to a GUI environment, although I haven't used RH for about 11 years (I have a couple of boxes running Ubuntu which automatically runs X at boot time, except for the server version).

I bet you will really like the iMac. I replaced my main Linux box with a Mini a few years ago (it must be time to upgrade).

[mitchd]

If you want it to boot into X, edit /etc/inittab and set the default runlevel. It should be commented, but all you do is look for a line like:
id:3:initdefault:
and change it to:
id:5:initdefault:

If you've seen X run after running startx then you should be ok with this, but you may need to install a display manager like xdm or something.

[Earl Bonovich]

I am not so worried about booting into X...
As I can now have both, command line and GUI on the console.

What I am really intrested in now... is how to get the X GUI, that I get on the console from startx... to appear on my Windows Desktop, so I don't have to spend the time back in the cold server room.

[Stuart Sweet]

IP-enabled KVM? VNC Server?

[mitchd]

Most people either do X session forwarding or something like VNC. I think in both cases, X needs to be running on the server.

For X forwarding you'll need an X server and SSH client on your windows machine.

Here's a quickly googled link that seems to lay it out pretty well:
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs11/misc/xwindows.html

[Doug Brott]

Earl,

Not sure to what extent you want to have the GUI running on your Windows PC or not. The way I do it is to run an X-Windows server on my PC and then have the Linux GUI windows display point back to my PC. It allows me to continue with my Normal "Windows" expectations yet have the GUI tools usable. I suspect that this will be a workable solution for you.

So your next question is .. OK, where do I get an X-Windows Server for my PC? That one is easy .. Cygwin.

http://www.cygwin.com/

You will need to download/run the Cygwin Setup (Install or Upgrade link) which will, in turn download a number of other applications/tools including X Windows .. Just select the tools you want to install and let it run. It could take a little while to download all of the parts, but everything will get stuffed into a c:\cygwin folder.

Once you loaded cygwin onto your computer, start a shell and run startxwin.bat. This will get X-Windows Server started on your PC. On your PC, you will need to run 'xhost +' to allow the remote Linux server to display back to your PC. Then SSH over to your Linux Server, set the DISPLAY environment variable to match your computer name with a :0 (colon zero) at the end and then start your X application.

The DISPLAY environment variable (on Linux) will need to be set something like this:

export DISPLAY=earlspc:0

[Doug Brott]

An alternative method would be to use SSH in some form (putty?) to get onto the Linux server. Then you can start a vncserver by simply typing 'vncserver' at the command line .. hopefully it's already installed. Then you can use the free vnc client from realvnc.com to connect to the VNC server on the linux box. This will open a desktop environment as a window on your Windows PC.

Each of the two methods here has advantages and disadvantages.

[Stuart Sweet]

I can talk a bit about VNC servers as I have used them for years. They are a fantastic and cheap way to control any other computer remotely. They run cross platform and can even run nested. At one point I had a Windows Mobile PDA controlling a Mac which had an open window to two PCs on it.

It's not perfect but it's surprisingly good. My only caveat would be that it's not the most secure platform for transfer so if any of your communication takes you outside the LAN, be careful. It's also quite bandwidth intensive but you can control that to a certain extent.

Most free VNC servers will not run on Vista by the way. Supposedly TeamViewer will, I have not tested it yet.

[Doug Brott]

Most free VNC servers will not run on Vista by the way. Supposedly TeamViewer will, I have not tested it yet.

Good observation .. I use XP here at work still. My mode of operation with Cygwin/X-Windows works fine on XP and Vista. I've been doing that for years and find it to be better in my situation.