MobaXterm Tips


MobaXterm:this tool is so much richer than Putty. It includes a SCP/SFTP client that can follow your terminal. Which means, every time you cd to a certain folder, your SFTP window will cd to it as well. I like the fonts, the looks more, it's more comfortable.
But it also includes a XServer, with no additional install! It's free, with a limited number of sessions though. However, the cost for a lifetime license is really low. So, as soon as I see a co-worker work with Putty, I recommend MobaXterm.

When connecting to a server, MobaXterm, by default (although you can uncheck it) will do X11Forwarding.

However, in the case of my colleague, unfortunately X11-forwarding was disabled:

We installed xclock which additionally installed several X-libraries. We checked XForwarding in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. All with no luck. We needed to set the X11UseLocalhost property to no in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.

The complete setup, following the whitepaper:
  1. Log into the instance (obviously)
  2. Configure SSHD to not use localhost for X11:
    1. Open /etc/ssh/sshd_config in your favorite editor.
    2. Search for the line that has X11UseLocalhost (it’scommented out).
    3. Uncomment  the line by removing the # from the beginning.
    4. Set the property to no.
    5. While you're at it, check if the property X11Forwarding is set to yes.
    6. Save the file.
    7. Restart the ssh daemon by executing: sudo systemctl restart sshd
  3. Install xauth by executing: sudo yum-y install xauth
  4. Install xterm (used to verify X configuration) by executing: sudo yum -y install xterm
  5. Also isntall xclock for simple testing of the X Forwarding: sudo yum -y install xclock
Now, reconnect using MobaXterm, and you should see that X11-forwarding is enabled:

When running xclock on the remote terminal will show a clock on your local desktop.
As can be seen in the screendump, you might run into the message 'Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion'. This can be solved following this hint by RedHat. It is caused by improper locale environment variable. Run the following:

1
export LC_ALL=C

You might want to add this to your ~/.bash_profile. Then run xclock again.

But, but, but... I can't log on to oracle...

To make things slightly more complicated, in most situations, you can't logon as the oracle user. You get a user to connect, and then have to sudo to oracle. In those cases you ned to redirect your xauth.

So, perform the following:
  1. Connect as the user provided 
  2. List your xauth by executing: xauth list $DISPLAY (you might need to check the DISPLAY variable)
    This would provide a line like:
    darlin123/unix<span style="color: red;"><b>:11</b></span>  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  <span style="color: #38761d;"><b>1231a6f34cca12394d3233456230df26</b></span>
  3. Sudo to oracle: sudo su - oracle
  4.  Then set the DISPLAY using the port from the xauth list above:
    export DISPLAY=darlin123:11
    (In some examples explaining this X forwarding across users, you might see export DISPLAY=localhost:11. But, remember: we disabled the use of localhost above).
  5. Then add the autorisation with:


    xauth add darlin123/unix<span style="color: red;"><b>:11</b></span>  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  <b><span style="color: #38761d;">1231a6f34cca12394d3233456230df26</span></b>

    Also take over the port in the display, as well as the GUID (in green) from the xauth list



export DISPLAY=servername.domain:10
xclock
echo $DISPLAY
xauth list
xauth add servername.domain/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  afe4bb937f4953f484e22ba32a661aac
export LC_ALL=C
xclock

export DISPLAY=servername.domain:10
xauth list
xauth add servername.domain/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  afe4bb937f4953f484e22ba32a661aac
export LC_ALL=C
xclock




GOOD LINK FOR MobaXterm
https://blog.darwin-it.nl/2018/10/enable-x11-on-oracle-cloud.html
https://harvarinder.blogspot.com/2016/09/xauth-file-homeoraclexauthority-does.html