Re: [LUG] Commandeering X

On 22 January 2014 10:24, Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

However at that point, the application is running on that remote PC but it's also taking mouse and keyboard input from the remote PC, not from your local PC which I think is what you're trying to achieve. (correct me if wrong)

Exactly right.

So if you have an application that works entirely from the command line (and I think you can make VLC go fullscreen & play a video that way) then it may do what you need,

VLC does indeed support this: --fullscreen

But if this is acceptable, then most X + desktops these days can auto-boot into being logged in with the desktop running without typing anything, so you could setup a blank/default desktop then ssh in and run full-screen applications that way.

Good idea but not feasible in this specific case.

Or I've gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick...

Au contraire, you have a pretty firm grip on it.

I now realize that for my current purposes I should never have mentioned the words "ssh", "remote" and "network". They are red herrings. A better illustration -- not my actual use case, but *logically* clearer -- would be this:

My LMDE host is multi-seat. Only one seat has an X display; all others are dumb character-mode terminals. Sitting at one of the dumb terminals (tty, sty, pty...), how can I cause the X display to dismiss the mdm greeter and start my desktop session, exactly as if I had walked over to the seat with the X display and used its keyboard to login?

I think that captures the true nature of my problem. The remote login via ssh is a strictly irrelevant distraction.

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