6. Having Cosmos Manage Your Local X Desktop on a MS Windows Machine

Using XFree86, or using eXceed in single-window mode, one can arrange for a remote X-server (e.g., that on Cosmos) to manage a local X-desktop on a MS Windows machine. The upshot is that, menus, drag-and-drop and other GUI functionality will be available, just as if you were sat at the remote server's console --- this is in addition to your own, local MS Windows WIMP environment (see figure --- click to enlarge). In particular one can have Cosmos manage a Gnome Session on your local X-desktop.

The scenario illustrated in the figure was achieved by using XFree86:

1. After installation of CygWin and XFree86 on the (local) MS Windows machine, start XFree86 (e.g., by running the startwin.bat batch file).
   
   
2. Either
   1. Ensure Cosmos has permission to access your local X-desktop (e.g., on this X-desktop, within an xterm accessing the local machine type: xhost cosmos.umist.ac.uk).
   2. Ensure the DISPLAY environment variable on Cosmos is set correctly, i.e., to the IP address of your local machine together with the correct X-desktop numeric value (e.g., within an xterm SSH to Cosmos, login and then type: export DISPLAY=130.88.<sub-net>.<host-ip>:0.0).
   or
   1. Ensure SSH is configured to tunnel X11 and login to Cosmos (do not set the DISPLAY variable in this case).
   
   
3. Finally, at the Cosmos prompt, start a window-manager --- this will be displayed on your local X-desktop, e.g., on Cosmos type: /usr/openwin/bin/twm &. (If you already have a window-manager running on your local X-desktop you will need to kill this --- you may wish to alter your CygWin/XFree86 configuration so prevent it starting a window-manager in the first place.)

A similar scenario can be achieve by using eXceed in single-window mode (see the separate documentation on eXceed).