Quitting ssh -X session with a running GUI program but leaving the program to run on the remote host

11
votes

I have ssh-ed to a remote machine. I have enabled X11 forwarding (ssh -X) and I have started a GUI program.

The program takes 5 minutes to set up to do some processing but the actual processing takes 1-2 hours. I don't want to stream data while the program is working. I don't even want to see the program again as it produces files as output when it finishes and I can just scp them.

So how can I quit the ssh session but leave the program running on the machine? CRTL+C in the terminal?

EDIT: For the answer please see my comment just below.

5
linuxuser-interfacesshterminalx11
OK so I stumbled across what I think is the easiest way to do it. I was reading about screen and it occurred to me that you can use the screen utility to detach and log out leaving the processes run on the remote computer. After that you can log in and re-attach. - s5s
One can use xpra for X programs similarly to screen for terminal programs: start X programs under it, the detach/reattach. -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xpra - imz -- Ivan Zakharyaschev

5 Answers

10
votes

Long story short - you can't do this without making some modifications to the way you run things. A GUI application requires for an X server target to be accepting it's GUI updates - if you're using your local X server to do this, then it'll require (1) the connection to be open (2) that you actually handle the updates.

A way around this is to use something like Xvfb - which is a headless way of hosting a virtual X-server. Above and beyond the examples provided on the wikipedia page, folks who seem to make frequent use of this mechanism are Selenium users.

2
votes

Awesome, I've been looking for an acceptable answer to my problem for hours, and finally one pops up. ssh -X -f login@machine yourprogram worked perfectly for me. Though I used ssh -Y -f login@machine yourprogram. This has been driving me nuts.

1
votes

Like some people said, SSH -X is using your local X server, so it needs the connection. I had the same problem, wanted to quit ssh but leaving GUI applications running. To do this I installed X server and VNC server on the remote host. With a VNC client on your local computer, you can easily connect to the VNC server and disconnect leaving GUI applications running.

By the way, you will have better performances with VNC or X2Go. In my case, Firefox was very slow and some sites didn't load at all with SSH -X, even with -Y or -C optimizations.

0
votes

Running ssh -X -f login@machine yourprogram should do the trick.

0
votes

Starting your program with nohup program & will make it safe to just close your terminal - program will still be running.

You won't be able to see the UI after you end ssh session, but since you don't need it anyway - it's going to do the job.