X Forwarding Sudo SSH Session
Many environments make use of sudo to delegate access to administrative or application user accounts. This can make ssh X forwarding tricky because your environment changes as you sudo to another user. This is a workaround that will allow you to continue your ssh X forwarding session while running sudo as another user.
How to SSH X Forward Sudo
First you will need a working X11 environment on your local system. There are a number of different options available depending on your OS.
Once you have your local X11 environment working and tested you’re ready to proceed x forwarding sudo.
[email protected]$ ssh -XC server [email protected]$ xauth list [output] [email protected]$ sudo su - otheruser [email protected]$ xauth add [paste output from "xauth list"] [email protected]$ xterm (or other X application) |
For more information please refer to the xauth, sudo and ssh man pages.
For x11 on a non-linux OS:
Xming for windows http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/
Xquartz for OSX http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/
August 19th, 2014 at 1:47 am
Just to add my inputs too. I have used xshell (or xmanager) for years without any issues on Windows. It is an awesome piece of software.
Regards,
Vikas
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March 2nd, 2017 at 1:14 am
I suggest using “sudo su otheruser” and leave out the hyphen, so the DISPLAY variable isn’t wiped.
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