Using X Windows remotely from cygwin

[Douglas Denholm]

I have sort of figured out how to access my YDL box remotely from my WinXP
box using Cygwin.

Basically, I was missing a complete step in the process. If any of the
previous posters had been trying to explain this, I am sorry I missed it.

Basically it seems to work like this...

1) I run cygwin.exe... This brings up a window that looks like a UNIX shell.
One can, for example, execute ping... Or even use ssh to open a session on a
remote machine. And if you execute, for example, 'ssh YellowDog -X -C -l
root', you will establish a session on the remote YellowDog machine and
there will be no error messages... But you have *not* established the
capability to run X back on the WinXP box. If you try to do so, you get
messages saying 'cannot open display ''".

2) I have finally figured out that all one does by opening cygwin, is to
create this UNIX-like shell window. It does not itself start the X server.

3) In order to run X Windows server (which most of us would normally call a
client!) on the WinXP box... One needs to run startxwin.bat *from within the
cygwin window*. If I try running it from a regular Command Prompt or by
double clicking in Windows Explorer, it won't work.

4) In any case, the X server creates another shell session (with a slightly
different graphical "feel" than the cygwin window) but otherwise looking
identical. If I then execute 'ssh YellowDog -X -C -l root', and then try and
create an Xterm back on the WinXP box it works.

5) And so do most of the X apps that I can also run remotely from my OS X
X11 session (e.g. Mozilla, KDE, etc.).

My problem was in thinking the Cygwin was the simply the WinXP equivalent of
OS X X11. I now gather, correct me if I am wrong, that Cygwin's primary
intent is to provide a UNIX-like environment with UNIX-like tools on the MS
Windows environment... And that the X capability is one of those tools.

In any case, I have it sort of working now. It does seem less robust than
the OS X X11... For example, I have problems opening some X app's remotely
on the WinXP box where I get the message like "klauncher cannot be reached
by DCOP". I have never seen that on the OS X X11 side. Any ideas how to fix
that in the WinXP/Cygwin environment would be appreciated.

--Doug