[Techtalk] Shutting off X ports.

[Anthony de Boer]

Telsa Gwynne wrote:
>  ...
> The guy was trying to be super-secure and didn't understand that
> X used the network. 
> 
> He had firewalled himself from localhost.

I have "X -nolisten tcp :0" in my .xserverrc.  This tells the X server
not to listen on tcp port 6000 at all, and X cheerfully uses a
Unix-domain socket for all its local needs.

(On another machine it's "/usr/X11R6/bin/Xwrapper :0 -auth
/home/adb/.Xauthority -nolisten tcp"; I think there's some history there
I didn't want to remember.) 

Not listening on a port in the first place beats having to firewall it.

When I do want to run an X client on another machine, I use ssh with
X forwarding enabled.

-- 
Anthony de Boer