Featured Articles
Announcing Pi
Technical Specifications
Raspberry Pi FAQs
Win a Pi
GPIO Pinout
Raspberry Pi Wishlist
Comparison Chart
Quiz
Group Actions
Engagement
  • Author Author: balearicdynamics
  • Date Created: Date Created
  • Views 8444 views
  • Likes 9 likes
  • Comments 29 comments
Related
Recommended

Pi and ssh connection without sacrificing the GUI advantages

balearicdynamics

There is something that I use almost intensively on the Linux environments and after testing this feature on Pi SSH connection I have decided to make this post. Frankly I am not sure if I have find nothing about the -Y feature mentioned around Element14 because it's so obvious to be silly or it is really a very few used feature. Apologise if it is the first case image

 

This feature has been tested with raspian wheezy on all the Raspberry PI models included the first version no more available on the market

 

Enabling the ssh protocol for remote communication with raspi-config on the Pi this affects also the linux X-Server. As the Linux GUI is a server, as a matter of fact it has the server features we can expect. So, launching the Pi remote connection from a terminal on your main computer call the command with this option:

 

$>ssh -Y pi@[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]

 

where [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] is the device network IP address. That's all!

I saw in many demo and presentations the use of the VLC application to show the Pi desktop somewhere else with the board connected in headless mode (without a directly connected monitor), mostly for screen-capture purposes. You should take in account that this is a more reliable option for at least two main reasons:

 

  1. You will use the user interface only when it is really needed.
  2. As Pi respect a laptop or PC has less resources, you use less memory and less resources in this way because only the specific process(es) you are using are consuming memory and CPU to manage the graphic interface.

 

The following image shows the MPIDE and the file-open launched from the the Pi while it is connected via ssh from a Mac desktop.

 

image

 

Another important aspect representing a great advantage respect any other method to manage the Pi GUI in this way, is that the clipboard sharing. This means that you can copy pieces of text  from the main computer and paste them to the Pi currently running application. The following image shows the sentence I have put in blue in above in this post, pasted in the leafpad Pi text-editor application. Then, the Pi applications continue working on the Pi device (storage, OS etc.). This is great when copying and pasting documents, moving images and so on.

 

image

Parents

  • Hi Enrico,

     

    This only works if your computer is a Mac or a Linux box, because (as far as I know) Windows does not ship with X client app. There are (probably free) downloadable ones, for Windows though.

    Another option is VNC, but it is too sluggish.

    A nice all-round option for Windows users is Remote Desktop - quicker than VNC, and the viewer is built-in to Windows.

     

    However, the question often needs to be asked, why do this, because another choice is to avoid a remote GUI/desktop entirely, since the Mac or PC will have better performance than the RPI, so if you have both at your

    disposal then better to split the tasks, i.e. use a local app on the PC, and then transfer the file to the RPI when needed.

    Just speeding up a workflow by a second or two for a repetitive task can have a massive effect on productivity.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Hi.

     

    This only works if your computer is a Mac or a Linux box, because (as far as I know) Windows does not ship with X client app. There are (probably free) downloadable ones, for Windows though.

     

    Take a look to the following links

     

    1. http://www.openssh.com/windows.html

    2. http://betanews.com/2015/05/07/ssh-client-smartty-2-0-adds-in-place-file-editing/

    3. http://winscp.net/eng/docs/free_ssh_client_for_windows

     

    just to cite the first page of google. It is almost obvious if you think that the ssh for terminal communication is almost essential to any user that has a crap web server on the net. And why he should be obliged to use Linux of Mac ? (I have some idea about, but tis is another question image image)

     

    Despite this silly example you should take in account that there are tons of terminal emulators, including the JDK samples from Oracle and the samples coming for the Qt IDE that shows a terminal supporting (at least) telnet, ssh and serial connections.

     

    However, the question often needs to be asked, why do this, because another choice is to avoid a remote GUI/desktop entirely, since the Mac or PC will have better performance than the RPI, so if you have both at your disposal then better to split the tasks, i.e. use a local app on the PC, and then transfer the file to the RPI when needed.

    Just speeding up a workflow by a second or two for a repetitive task can have a massive effect on productivity.

     

    I hope you was joking ...

  • in reply to balearicdynamics

    I use PuTTY and other SSH clients of course. I was referring to X clients.

    Not used one (X client app) in quite a while on Windows, I remember the few free ones were pretty awful, and the commercial one (Xceed) was expensive. This may have changed.

    Remote Desktop is well supported on Windows thankfully, so might be a better option for Windows users.

     

    Enrico Miglino wrote:

     

     

    However, the question often needs to be asked, why do this, because another choice is to avoid a remote GUI/desktop entirely, since the Mac or PC will have better performance than the RPI, so if you have both at your disposal then better to split the tasks, i.e. use a local app on the PC, and then transfer the file to the RPI when needed.

    Just speeding up a workflow by a second or two for a repetitive task can have a massive effect on productivity.

     

    I hope you was joking ...

     

     

    No, which bit of that do you disagree with?

  • in reply to shabaz

    We used Xceed at college, that was back in the 1990s though.

  • in reply to Workshopshed

    Hehe yeah it's quite old : ) Also another one called Reflection was a commercial one I think.

    I know Cygwin comes with X server (got my terminology wrong in my previous post) but I try to avoid Cygwin where possible due to awkward licensing and the need for the DLL - perhaps that has changed now too.

Comment Children