CentOS - Aug 2006 - Running firefox on a remote host on centos-4

Back in the day (read: before the latest firefox update), I used to be
able to ssh to a remote box, run 'firefox -local', and have that box
fire
up its own firefox session even if I was running firefox on the system
from I which I sshed.  Those days seem to be gone.  No matter what I try, if 
I've got firefox running on my local desktop, the remote firefox command
just
fires off another instance of the local firefox session.

I've got several boxes running monitoring daemons reporting via http only to
the localhost, so this was a handy feature for me.  Is there any official way 
to get it back?  If not, I guess I'll have to hack a 'localfirefox'
script that
doesn't do the nasty mozilla-xremote-client trick.

Ah, progress... *sigh*

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University

On Friday 11 August 2006 22:15, Joshua Baker-LePain
wrote:
> Back in the day (read: before the latest firefox update), I used to be
> able to ssh to a remote box, run 'firefox -local', and have that
box fire
hmm.. -no-xshm works for me, never heard of -local :-)

/Peter
> up its own firefox session even if I was running firefox on the system
> from I which I sshed.  Those days seem to be gone.  No matter what I try,
> if I've got firefox running on my local desktop, the remote firefox
command
> just fires off another instance of the local firefox session.
>
> I've got several boxes running monitoring daemons reporting via http
only
> to the localhost, so this was a handy feature for me.  Is there any
> official way to get it back?  If not, I guess I'll have to hack a
> 'localfirefox' script that doesn't do the nasty
mozilla-xremote-client
> trick.
>
> Ah, progress... *sigh*
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On Mon, 14 Aug 2006 at 9:07am, Peter Kjellstr?m wrote
> On Friday 11 August 2006 22:15, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
>> Back in the day (read: before the latest firefox update), I used to be
>> able to ssh to a remote box, run 'firefox -local', and have
that box fire
>
> hmm.. -no-xshm works for me, never heard of -local :-)
Really?  It doesn't work for me.  I still get another instance of the 
local firefox session.  Ditto for --no-xshm, --noshm, and -noshm.

-- 
Joshua Baker-LePain
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University

Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> Back in the day (read: before the latest firefox update), I used to be
> able to ssh to a remote box, run 'firefox -local', and have that
box fire
> up its own firefox session even if I was running firefox on the system
> from I which I sshed.  Those days seem to be gone.  No matter what I 
> try, if I've got firefox running on my local desktop, the remote
firefox
> command just fires off another instance of the local firefox session.
> 
> I've got several boxes running monitoring daemons reporting via http 
> only to the localhost, so this was a handy feature for me.  Is there any 
> official way to get it back?  If not, I guess I'll have to hack a 
> 'localfirefox' script that doesn't do the nasty
mozilla-xremote-client
> trick.
> 
> Ah, progress... *sigh*
> 
As an alternative solution, why don't you take advantage of ssh's port 
forwarding ability and use just your local copy of firefox to access the 
web server as if you were local to the box.  When you connect to the 
remote box, use something like:

      ssh -L 8080:localhost:80 remotebox

Then on your local box's copy of firefox point the url to:

      http://localhost:8080/

This should (assuming the network is slower than gigabit) provide you 
with the fastest firefox response and use less resources on the remote 
systems.  There are other possible benefits such as, with multiple ssh 
sessions and different port redirects (8081, 8082, ...) you could 
monitor daemons (different boxes) from different tabs in a single 
firefox window.

The one caveat with this is if you are using virtual hosts on the web 
server, further tweaks to the local hosts file and the local firefox url 
will be required.

Erik

> Back in the day (read: before the latest firefox update), I used to be
> able to ssh to a remote box, run 'firefox -local', and have that
box fire
> up its own firefox session even if I was running firefox on the system
> from I which I sshed.  Those days seem to be gone.  No matter what I try,
if
> I've got firefox running on my local desktop, the remote firefox
command just
> fires off another instance of the local firefox session.
This is relied to the problem I have using "firefox -P" on my
local centos to try to start a new instance of firefox with a
different profile.

My solution is to start
env MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1 firefox -P

Could you try that? I checked it through ssh and it works. Just
that you have to chose the profile at start.

					Anne
-- 
Anne Possoz, Domaine IT-GE            Espace logiciel libre ? l'Ecole
Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne (Switzerland)

Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> Back in the day (read: before the latest firefox update), I used to be
> able to ssh to a remote box, run 'firefox -local', and have that
box fire
> up its own firefox session even if I was running firefox on the system
> from I which I sshed.  Those days seem to be gone.  No matter what I 
> try, if I've got firefox running on my local desktop, the remote
firefox
> command just fires off another instance of the local firefox session.
> 
> I've got several boxes running monitoring daemons reporting via http 
> only to the localhost, so this was a handy feature for me.  Is there any 
> official way to get it back?  If not, I guess I'll have to hack a 
> 'localfirefox' script that doesn't do the nasty
mozilla-xremote-client
> trick.
> 
> Ah, progress... *sigh*
> 

Did you try this in your X-forwarded ssh session?

firefox -display $DISPLAY


-- 
Jos? Traver Ardura -- Tf +34 964 72 9243
?rea de Sistemes -- Servei d'Inform?tica