Re: question/suggestion

[Gordon Messmer <yinyang eburg com>]

On Sun, 6 Aug 2000, Andrew Oliver wrote:

> 1. Ability to open windows with different
> context/context managers

Might be a good idea, but it might also require another SUID root
binary.  The fewer of those I have on my system, the better I feel.

I can only really see developers needing to do lots of testing, and for
them, the best options are probably a nested X server of one type or
another.  XFree86-Xnest or Xvnc are good options.

> 2. Cross-machine context.
> 2. Mainly this would help administrators.  I for one
> HATE installing X on a real server!  Secondly I loathe
> installing X on a firewall/router type server.  It
> WOULD be nice however to somehow run software against
> that machine.

You don't want to install the X server, or you don't want to install the X
libraries?  _Something_ has to be installed on that machine you want
remote access to. If, for instance, you want a GUI configuration tool for
the config files, you're either going to have to install Xlibs, gnome
libs and the GNOME tool to edit the files, or you're going to have to
install some kind of specialized server to modify those files and
interface with your GUI system.  That server is going to open up more
ports, and become another point of attack.  From a security standpoint,
SSH and some tools that aren't SUID root are a much better way to go, even
if they're a few more MB in size.

> it would be nice to just open a capplet or
> control-panel or whatever under root@linux1 (from
> linux2)

ssh root@linux1 mohawk

Should get you a secure, possibly compressed, session to do what you
want. (Mohawk is the name of the upcoming apache config tool, isn't it? I
don't recall, exactly)

MSG