[Mimedefang] watch-mimedefang

Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Feb 16 00:13:03 EST 2010


Cliff Hayes wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> It is fairly difficult to imagine a box that is still running today that
> couldn't handle a GUI
> 
> The 42 servers I manage range in age from old to new, Fedora 4 thru 12,
> ubuntu, and Windows.  None will ever see a "user" who would benefit from a
> GUI ... only me remoting in to tweak/repair.

The server themselves don't need a GUI - but having one on the machine where you 
have tools to manage them will make your work easier even if all you do is run a 
bunch of xterms with ssh to the others.

 > IMHO GUIs are great for users but
> unnecessary overhead on servers.  Three of the boxes are Windows so I have
> no choice there.  I must be in the minority since there appears to be no
> call for a web version of watch-mimedefang.

The nature of X is that you can run single applications in a remote window, so 
all you need on the servers are the basic X libs, and they are only loaded when 
you run a graphic application.  The real overhead is in the desktop environment 
which can be elsewhere.

> I'll have to give up on the
> cgywin as it took half a day (and 1G of hard drive space) to attempt to set
> up the logistics for it and I still can't establish the ssh relationship
> necessary for it to work.

Most of the time goes into building and installing all the local fonts.  How did 
it fail for you?  Did 'startx' give you the X screen with some open xterms? 
Could you 'ssh -Y' to your server from one of them?  If you got that far, 
starting a remote program should have worked.  You should even be able to use 
putty on the windows side if you set up the X tunnel option - I've forgotten if 
you need to set up the DISPLAY environment.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com







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