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On 29/02/2020 01:05, Simon Waters wrote:
On Friday, 28 February 2020 13:47:05 GMT Neil wrote:I wanted to look at an image on another computer, as a test. So I used ssh -Y to link to it, opened the relevant folder and used feh to view the image. All seemed to work. Is this a good way to go, or should I be using something else?My understanding is that "ssh -Y" enables X11 forwarding. X11 is an old and complex protocol; age and complexity tends to be bad for protocols, because network folk were less paranoid in the past, and complexity means it is hard to understand the full implications of enabling it. There has been work to add a security layer to X11, it probably won't protect you from the NSA or similar because of the complexity and extensions. On the other hand if the remote system is trusted, or you have no reason to believe it has been compromised by advanced hostile hacking teams intent on accessing your computer, life with X11 Forwarding is good, and we use to have fun back in the 1990s sending silly things around the network (things were rather less secure still back then).
It is just for the computers at home, my two and the wife's one. So, just within my little local space. So not worried about security.
Last time I used it in anger was the launch of Oracle 8, when you needed an X11 server in order to run the Java installer for HP-UX, to be able to do a command line installs of their RDBMS (I have no idea how they released such broken tools after Oracle 7.3.4, it tooks ages for them to sort it out). I think I did some messing around 17 years ago trying to make something else work with Hummingbird X11 for Windows or some such but it was horrid, and I ran away screaming (mostly the Windows X11 implementation to be fair).
Sounds as if you have been around a while, like me.
From a "I want to see lots of files on a computer I have SSH access to", the obvious alternative choice is SSHFS, which makes an ssh connection work like a file system using "sftp". See "man sshfs". This should be reasonably robust security-wise too.
Don't know that one. Will have a look at it.
Don't use KDE or dolphin. My file manager is Thunar. Will have a look at that. And to me, fish is a shell, similar to bash.There are some set-up Wizards in the various graphical user desktops for this type of access. e.g. In KDE Dolphin just click "Add Network Folder" and fill in the details as you would for the SSH command line, pick "SFTP"*, the remote folder you want to see "/home/simon" say and it is doing the same thing but with a shiny GUI, and will bookmark it for later. And you can access the folder with all your familiar tools etc. KDE also offers FISH rather than SFTP, which is a file transfer over shell protocol. They were horrid enough back in the days of serial comms (Kermit and YModem, Zmodem etc), I have no idea why people reinvented it, or why KDE is still offering it. Possibly they had really complex multi-hop file transfers or long dead operating systems or both. If anyone knows the history of this please share.
Thanks, Neil -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq