Launch firefox on remote server using SSH with a command line parameter

Question

Is there a way to launch firefox on a remote server using SSH this way ? :

ssh username@ip_address [command line]

When I run: ssh username@ip_address -Y (or -X) firefox (I want to launch firefox on the remote -Ubuntu Desktop- from my local -Ubuntu Server), I get this error: Error: no display specified

Important note: I want to run this command from an Ubuntu Server to an Ubuntu Desktop operating system.

Answer 1

You can use X Forwarding to do that. Make sure that firefox is installed on your server, then from your desktop, run:

ssh username@ip_adress -Y [command line]

if -Y does not work, you can still use -X instead.

If it's not working, be sure that:

• in /etc/ssh/sshd_config on the server, X11Forwarding is set to yes
• in /etc/ssh/ssh_config on the client, ForwardX11 is set to yes. Add the line if needed.
• xauth is installed on the server : sudo apt-get install xauth

Regards,

Thomas.

Answer 2

This should get you rolling:

ssh machine DISPLAY=0:0 firefox

Just tried it with two Ubuntu machines.

The syntax FOO=asdf BAR=fdsa command arg arg2 isn't special to SSH, just sets environment vars for command. You need to tell Firefox where's the X11 display - in this case it's the same machine as Firefox. X11 forwarding isn't used because both Firefox and the X11 server are in the same box.

See also https://superuser.com/questions/368530/understanding-x-windows-display-environment-variable-when-tunnelling

Answer 3

Simple remote browsing

If you'd like to browse the web locally as if you were sitting in front of a remote box:

$ ssh -X username@remote.example.com

then run Firefox inside the remote terminal session:

$ firefox https://test-ipv6.com/

Notice the usage of -X flag in the ssh command. You can also do both steps in a single go, like shown below:

$ ssh -X username@remote.example.com firefox http://test-ipv6.com/

Tunnelling a remote IP:port

If you have an application running remotely which exposes some sort of web frontend, you will be interested on exposing the remote IP:port as if it is a local IP:port. In this case, the -L option defines a correspondence between localhost:localport and remotehost:remoteport, as shown in the pseudo command below:

ssh -L localhost:localport:remotehost:remoteport remoteuser@remotehost

For example:

$ ssh -L 127.0.0.1:18080:internal.example.com:8080 username@router.example.com

then run Firefox locally:

$ firefox http://127.0.0.1:18080

In the example above, you are connecting via SSH onto username@router.example.com, and you are interested on a web frontend exposed at internal.example.com:8080. This remote IP:port will be exposed locally at 127.0.0.1:18080.