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I've been struggling with Xming and putty for a while and I can't make it work; I enabled X11 forwarding in putty, updated xauth list on the client side with the xauth list of the server side.

Currently I can run xclock from the client machine on the server machine when the DISPLAY is set to :0.0 (it shows xclock on the server machine), but I can't run it locally on the client machine; in other words, xming window doesn't pop up at all.

I already changed the DISPLAY to localhost:0.0, myip:0.0, and none has worked. When I run xclock (when display is set to myip:0.0) it starts (I don't get "can't find Display" error) but still xming doesn't show anything.

P.S. In my sshd_config I have the following lines:

X11Forwarding yes X11Displayoffset 10 X11UseLocalhost yes

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1 Answer

Try this:

  • First, unset any DISPLAY variable, as this will make puTTY take that value as it's target display.
  • Execute XLaunch (bundled with the Xming installer) with the default display (:0.0)
  • Next, launch puTTY as:

    putty -X {user}@{host}

    replacing {user} and {host} with your username and the hostname or ip address of your remote computer

  • Launch xeyes or any other x application in the puTTY console.

When you use puTTY with -X flag, it automatically creates a bridge between a local display in the remote computer, and the :0.0 display in the local one. You can also use -X <display> to user a non-default local display.

The -X flag can also be set in the configuration window of puTTY under the section: Connection -> SSH -> X11 -> Enable X11 Forwarding

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