SSH X forwarding: view an existing window on the host

Question

Lets say I have firefox running on a server. Can I ssh into the server and display the firefox windows on the client? I don't mean open new windows or a new session from the client, rather I want to display and modify the 3 windows I left running on the server. Or would I have to use VNC instead?

Answer 1

No, X doesn't work like this.

VNC does. I think NX does that too.

Answer 2

SSH with X forwarding doesn't work that way...that is unless you use screen command and launch the browser windows after in a screen session, this way you can quit the ssh session and come back to the screen session later with all the windows still up(though I don't know why you would launch three different sessions of firefox instead of just using tabs).

To display and modify any programs that are open to the current user that is logged in via a graphical windows environment on the machine you would have to use VNC. I would suggest TightVNC.