Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

FYI, if you're not using xdm/kdm/gdm but are instead starting the X11 server manually with startx (which is what I usually do) you might have experienced brokenness in Debian unstable recently:

Fatal server error:
Unrecognized option: /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc

This is already reported as bug #482425 and #482527 and should hopefully be fixed soon, but in the meantime this patch against /usr/bin/startx should work around the issue:

--- /usr/bin/startx.orig 2008-05-26 18:21:26.000000000 +0200
+++ /usr/bin/startx     2008-05-26 18:21:36.000000000 +0200
@@ -107,9 +107,7 @@
 if [ x"$server" = x ]; then
     # if no server arguments or display either, use rc file instead
     if [ x"$serverargs" = x -a x"$display" = x ]; then
-       server=$defaultserver
        serverargs=$defaultserverargs
-       display=$defaultdisplay
     else
        server=$defaultserver
     fi

Hope that saves some people out there lengthy investigations and hassle.

Dear Lazyweb,

I have always wondered whether it is possible to "hijack" an already running X11 application on a remote server...

Say I have a box at home which has a running X11 server with many applications, e.g. Firefox, xchat, xmms, whatever. Now, say I'm somewhere else with my laptop and login with "ssh -X" into my home box. I can now start X11 applications and they will be shown on my laptop screen. So far so good.

But... how can I get one of the applications that were already running before I logged in from remote to be displayed on my laptop screen? Is it possible? How?

Just curious.

Some interesting Free Software releases:

• OpenSSH: The upcoming OpenSSH 4.3 will be able to "make a real VPN using OpenSSH without the need for any additional software. This goes well beyond the TCP port forwarding that we have supported for years". See also Slashdot story.
• X11: New, Modularized X Window Release Now Available for Download — X11R6.9 and X11R7.0 have been released simultaneously. The latter now uses the autotools as build system and is modularized. This should lead to shorter release cycles.
• Git: git 1.0, the directory content manager created by Linus Torvalds in order to replace Bitkeeper, has been released.
• Qemu: Qemu 0.8 has been released, now supporting SMP, and USB.

Lots of stuff to try out...