在 VNC 服务器桌面上打开的 X11 在我的 VNC 查看器而不是 VNC 服务器上打开窗口

Question

I'm having an interesting issue and my searches (plus the suggested articles here) aren't helping because I'm probably using the wrong terms.

I have three workstations:

1. Lin - a Linux instance running XServer.
2. Mac - a MacBook Pro with remote management enabled and XQuartz installed.
3. Win - Windows workstation running VNC Client.

Using VNC Client on Win, I am able to connect to and control the Mac desktop. This works as expected except that copy-paste doesn't work between them but that is a topic for another post.

Mac also has a connection to Lin, which is running X server.

When I am connected via VNC from Win to Mac, I open a Mac terminal, run "ssh -X user@Lin's address and connect successfully to Lin from Mac.

When I run "xterm" in that Mac terminal which is ssh -X to Lin, the xterm window opens on Mac as I expect.

However, when I run "chromium-browser", "firefox", etc in that same Mac terminal, the X window opens on Win, not Mac. Same behavior if I run an xwindows app in the xterm window on mac - it opens on Win, not Mac.

How is this possible and what can I do to control it? There may be times I might want that but mostly I want the X applications to run on Mac, not Win.

I get confused between which is the "server" and which is the "client" here, especially with three machines involved.

Answer 1

Resolved - it turned out I had an X server running on Win via MobaXTerm and the DISPLAY variable was not correctly set on Mac, so X was just passing the connection through.

I don't understand how that happened automatically via VNC (I didn't have any other connections between Win and Mac), but when I stopped the X server on Win and restarted the XQuartz app on Mac, windows began to open where I expected.