Forward X11 display to Ubuntu 14.04

I spent a lot of hours before realizing that Ubuntu 14.04 blocks tcp by default.

One can check this by

ps aux | grep X
root      1127  0.1  3.4 364380 71748 tty7     Ss+  12:08   0:00 /usr/bin/X -core :0 
   -seat seat0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch

Notice the -nolisten option in output.

To enable it, add xserver-allow-tcp=true to lightdm:

sudo vi /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-xserver-command.conf
 [SeatDefaults]
 # Dump core
 xserver-command=X -core
 xserver-allow-tcp=true

Restart X (or reboot) and forward X11 desktop by launching:

# server
export DISPLAY=<your-localhost-ip>:0

# client
xhost +

You can test Display forwarding by launching on server

xeyes

credits

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