Andrew Hull wrote:
>
>
> I do exactly what you suggest. I keep a minimal X install on most of my
> headless machines -- I still boot run level 3. This lets me "ssh -X" to
> a machine and execute graphical commands, and up the come on my local
> Linux workstation.
>
> Occasionally, this is very useful for me. For instance: I have some of
> these headless boxen scattered throughout the network. With this, I can
> launch firefox on a remote machine. This lets me test viewing resources
> from various points of the network; great for security policy testing.
>
> What you're talking about works great too. I have gkrellm installed on
> these machines too, as well as the servers. Cacti is great for looking
> at trending or historical data. But to see what a server is up to _right
> now_ I fire up gkrellm this way (along with things like "tail 'cat
> /var/log/_something_'" and htop) to see what the machine is up to right
> then and there.
>
> gkrellm is available from the wonderful rpmforge repo, but I'm sure
> Conky would work too.
You can take this one step further by picking an always-on host where
you run freenx. Then connect with the NX client from www.nomachine.com
and start a desktop where you can park long running jobs like monitoring
tools (including remote X connections or a bunch of xterms with ssh
connections elsewhere). Then you can disconnect the NX client and
reconnect later with everything still running. The connection can be
from any linux/windows/mac NX client and you get very good remote
performance even over low bandwidth connections - and unlike normal X
connections, losing the connection doesn't kill the processes.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com