How to setup Xming and Putty to allow X Windows based applications on Linux

Having gone thru a number of installs of WebSphere and Connections on Linux and getting slightly frustrated with doing silent installs (and worse silent unintalls) using response files I decided it was finally time to figure out how to get X Windows going so I could go back to a GUI based installer.

So there are two parts to this:

1) Xming - XMing is an X Windows port for Microsoft Windows. Essentially it’s an X-server which starts transparently on top of your MS Windows desktop. It allows you to redirect graphical output of applications you run on remote Unix servers and therefore see these applications windows on your MS Windows desktop. Again simply install and launch Xming. You will note a little icon in your task bar indicated the Xming server is running.

2) Putty - PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Windows and Unix platforms. Simply download and install. Once installed we need to connect to your linux server using SSH andmodify the ssh daemon config file: /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Just ensure that it has the following:

# X11 tunneling options
X11Forwarding yes
X11DisplayOffset 10
X11UseLocalhost yes

You may already have the correct setting in which case do nothing however if you change anything you will need to restart ssh. To restart SSH use the command /etc/init.d/sshd restart.

Now that is done all you need to do is start a new Putty session however this time in the Connection section, then SSH, then X11, make sure you tick the Enable X11 Forwarding option.

That is it! Much to my delight when I next tried to install WebSphere using the normal ./install command a moment later a X Window application launched on my computer enabling me to use the Wizards again!