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XLiveCD: Cygwin and X For Windows On A Live CD
mallumax writes "OSnews is running a story
on XliveCD which runs an X server (from X.org) from the CD using Cygwin. Also included are awk, sed, perl, vim, bash, grep, other text utilities, and most importantly an OpenSSH client. XliveCD is being developed by University Technology Services of Indiana University. Now you can carry Cygwin with you! I have been looking for something like this for a long time. Torrent link."
What is the point?
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Replying to myself... Oh dear.
Thinking about it, I just realised I flagged myself as someone who's been using Windows too much (or at least using single user machines). Using an X server means you can have multiple people accessing a single largish back end server, which isn't doable with VNC. For example - you're in a University/College course with a small number of terminals, but there's a Windows lab with network access. You've spent too much on cheap alcohol^W^Wtextbooks to afford a decent PC or net connection, so this way you can sidestep the cue for the terminals to do your work.
The terminology makes sense. It is indeed the X server which offers a service to the applications, not the other way around. To see this the other way around, the applications would have to provide the content so that display clients can connect anytime, which is not how the X protocol is designed. Other protocols (like VNC) do implement the latter paradigm, so they rightfully use the terminology the other way around.
If you need VNC, cant you just put the Vncclient.exe on your floppy/cd/usb key and use it?
Are you kidding? I used to run xterm and Emacs over 2400 baud and it was tolerable, even before I tried lbxproxy. On the other hand, TightVNC is not usable for serious work even over a cable modem. As I understand, VNC sends bitmaps while X11 forwards drawing calls and many things like images and fonts are cached on the server.
Even if everything else was the same, VNC has to refresh the whole screen, while with X you can just open a couple of small windows from remote. How can it have a better performance?
Now you can carry Cygwin with you! I have been looking for something like this for a long time.
:rolleyes:
:shaking fist at slashgods:
You have been looking for a long time? I have been carrying around a flash card with ssh keys, Putty, a fat installation of Cygwin with every tool you oodled over, along with ethreal and various other network tools for like 2 years. I also have a backup of all this stored in a subdirectory on my iPod.
This is like something a Wired! subscriber would get excited about: A distribution of win32 tools where all you have to do is put the CD in the thingy and press "I agree".
How about more headlines on Cygwin when there are major updates? If it were up to me, any time good projects like Linux from Scratch get updated, I would make that a headline. The way I see it, we want to attract the people who actually think to threads, and not the perpetual computer noobies who give up when "that thing they clicked on did not go the first time around".
The terminology makes sense, but is it sensible?
When you run the server on your thin client, and the clients all run on your rackmount server, and the newbies are all confused, and we need to write posts explaining why the seemingly backwards terminology is in fact correct... in some sense, it's sensible, but if you take a poll of a bunch of newbies, the consensus would be that it's confusing. (I'll stop now before someone beats me senseless.)
If some terminology makes arguable sense but confuses everyone but hard-core computer geeks, is it really the best terminology? I say no.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
You can hack out cygwin quite effectively - don't forget the registry keys need to be deleted and all cygwin1.dll have to go. You can find info on the website, and you may get help on the list depending upon how mean everyone is feeling and how you ask :-)
The terminology conveys meaning. It's not just a bunch of arbitrary names. When you learn that the X server is indeed the server, it is easier to understand important properties of the interaction with X clients and servers, like, if you shut down the server, the clients lose their display and usually stop (because persistence and continuity is usually located on the server).
So, configure ssh to use S/Key, generate some one time pass phrases, and carry this live CD with you. Login remotely to your system, be careful not to do anything which is security sensitive, and you are set.
No you're not. If the client machine is compromised, one-time logins cannot protect you. The local SSH client could do evil things in a hidden side-channel to your actual work.
I've seen proof-of-concept modifed SSH clients which secretly download files from the remote homedir whenever anyone connects to anyplace (and that's in addition to logging all the activities of the session, of course).
With work, the operating system could be modified to recognize known popular SSH clients (such as putty.exe on your USB drive, or this X LiveCD thing), and secretly replace it with a compromised version when you attempt to run from your supposedly-trusted removable media.
to do anything which is security sensitive,
Um... if the activity was genuinely insensitive to security, you could run naked telnet. It's true that attacks like I described are probably rare enough that many people would be willing to run the risk, but they should still be aware of the threats and make that choice on their own. Elaborate multi-part attacks will only become more common as time goes by.
This is actually a very nice thing to have, it writes no permanent files to the HD, no need to reboot, and you have the ability to run your X apps where ever you are, over a single port to no less.
That means I can use *my* browser, with all of my short cuts and plugins (or lack there of) and I only have to keep one configured instead of the current three that I do now. Also you get to use all of your own apps, configured the way you like them. And because it is all done securely, on your own machine, surf for what ever you want "Harold down the hall was caught surfing for porn, inspect his machine" "I don't know what they saw, but only thing on ther was mens boxer pictures from WalMart's website." Actually the more I think about it this is a great privacy tool that can be easily handed out.
Light, responsive and it allows you to bring even non-ported F/OSS programs to a Windows desktop. I realy don't see what there is to be down on this about. Congrats to the people developing it.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I'm sure you meant otherwise, but saying you prefer [a client] over [a protocol] makes no sense. I use putty to connect to my linux firewall which runs openssh.
Free software is about choice. You would deny Windows users that same choice that you trumpet from the parapets all day long about the One True OS - Linux? Free software is also about zero cost, you would deny that as well to the windows world? You'd also deny Mac users a powerful user/development experience wouldn't you? What a load of hypocrisy.
IMO, applications should do this anyway. I hate programs that require setting some XYZ_HOME environment variable so that it can find itself. Any executable should know where it is, period. Of course I'm biased with a Mac background, as I expect something to run wherever I put it. I find that using GetModulePath(), realpath(), and [[NSBundle mainBundle] executablePath] makes my code perform nicely on each platform. I just put the exe and its files anywhere I want. Registry settings and environment variables are handy for programmers, but they're horrendous from a user interface standpoint.
Maybe in the short term, but in the long term if people have most of their software being multi-OS FOSS, they have less of a barrier to change OS (instead of having to learn to use different software and a different OS, they just have to learn the OS), so they might be more likely to change to linux eventually.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
The point here is that ssh is running off of your CD. Unless the public Windows machine is smart enough to see your ssh loaded into memory and switch it with another on the fly...
Please loosen your tin foil hat just a little.
No you're not. If the client machine is compromised, one-time logins cannot
protect you. The local SSH client could do evil things in a hidden side-channel to
your actual work.
While I generally agree with your position about security on public terminals, you're missing the point of this CD that the ssh client is running from the CD. So is cygwin. True, it is possible that a piece of spyware might be tailored to intercept the execution of the software on the CD, and insert its own SSH client and Cygwin, but it would have to be an awfully specialized piece of spyware to handle all the scenarios smartly and transparently. Keyloggers, of course, supercede all this, but the S/Key one time password neuters them somewhat.