Normally I use VNC-over-SSH to provide a complete desktop to a remote user.
Is there a way to provide a single application to a user instead of a complete desktop?
In this case I am looking for a method to provide remote report-viewing access to LedgerSMB for a company's outside accountant. LedgerSMB runs through a web browser (i.e. http://localhost/ledgersmb) so he doesn't need or want remote access to anything other than one instance of Firefox.
In other words, normally the remote users crank up a VNC session and see their full desktop. For this instance I would like to have him see only a Firefox session.
A ssh session like "ssh -X user@remotehost firefox" works.
But it's painfully slow. On the other hand, VNC has a reasonable amount of snap.
The other approach would be to somehow do use some kind of ssh port-forwarding under Firefox so he could run Firefox locally on his own computer, and somehow access http://localhost/ledgersmb on the remote machine. Is there such a thing as a "remote localhost" that would work like that?
I don't want to open anything other than ssh on the application server to the big scary world.
To complicate things a bit more, the accountant runs Windows on his computer.
Maybe there is a simple way to accomplish this feat and I'm just not seeing it?