Get xpra to work on Ubuntu 14.04

Xpra is like screen or tmux for X apps.  There is a commercial app called Exceed on Demand and xpra seems to work very similarly to that.  Xpra is a very nice alternative to VNC and performs a lot better than forwarding X over ssh.  Here's how I got it to work using Ubuntu 14.04 as a server and windoze (is that joke getting old yet?) as a client.  Xpra says you can run Mac and Linux clients as well, but I haven't tried that yet.

To get it installed and running, dig down from the main Xpra site to the trusty download area, or just click here for 64-bit.  Download the highest version numbered python-rencode and xpra packages there, then do this on your command line:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/python-rencode_1.0.3-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install python-numpy python-opengl python-lzo python-appindicator python-gtkglext1 xvfb
sudo dpkg -i ~/Downloads/xpra_0.15.10-1_amd64.deb

When you try to install either .deb package it might report other dependencies that are missing. Just sudo apt-get install those and then try the sudo dpkg -i command again. After it's all installed you can run an xpra server like so (the options were suggested to my by xpra the first time I tried to run it):

xpra start :1234 --start-child=xterm --no-notifications --no-pulseaudio

On the windows side, download the xpra installer by clicking the link on the main xpra page. After running that it will offer to run xpra. Go ahead and do that. Choose ssh in the Mode dropdown. Leave all the other fields as they are and enter your ssh login information (what you would use to ssh to the ubuntu machine you just started the server on) and the display number (we used 1234 above when we started the server). You can leave the password field blank, it will prompt you for your ssh password after you click connect. Once you do that an xterm will open up on your windows desktop and you can start any other linux apps you want from there. There will be an xpra tray icon you can use to change settings and disconnect. After you disconnect you can reconnect and all the windows you had open will come right back just like they were when you disconnected. It also saves your state if you are disconnected from the network unexpectedly (like maybe your laptop goes to sleep or something). It's very nice.

One other thing I noticed is that the apps xpra was showing me were a little fuzzy (the text in emacs was hard to read). I had to click on the xpra tray icon and change the desktop scaling option (it was making the windows larger for some reason). You can also edit the C:\Program Files (x86)\Xpra\xpra.conf file and change the desktop scaling option there (along with many other settings, for example, I turned off sound and microphone because I don't need that and I figured it might save some CPU and bandwidth).

I'm glad I found xpra and got it working.   It works so well, I'm really surprised I haven't heard more people talking about it.  Go try it out!

Comments

Sheenam said…
Hi
Thanks it was useful.

But I have a bit different Question, I am using Ubuntu server and want to use it with xpra-html client. I want a desktop app from that server to open in any other client using any of their browser. I did it with Ubuntu 16 desktop version and it works perfectly fine there.

In ubuntu 14 server when I use this command :
"xpra start --bind-tcp=0.0.0.0:10000 --html=on --start-child=xterm"

it gives out this :
"xpra: error: no such option: --html"

I think I need to update my xpra version but I don't know how to update and install them one by one. Can you please guide me through this? I really need xpra for my project and learning.

Waiting for your positive response

Thanks
August 29, 2017 at 7:37 PM
Ashton said…
Great blog, thanks for posting
December 11, 2021 at 3:01 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SystemVerilog Fork Disable "Gotchas"

This is a long post with a lot of SystemVerilog code. The purpose of this entry is to hopefully save you from beating your head against the wall trying to figure out some of the subtleties of SystemVerilog processes (basically, threads). Subtleties like these are commonly referred to in the industry as "Gotchas" which makes them sound so playful and fun, but they really aren't either. I encourage you to run these examples with your simulator (if you have access to one) so that a) you can see the results first hand and better internalize what's going on, and b) you can tell me in the comments if this code works fine for you and I'll know I should go complain to my simulator vendor. OK, I'll start with a warm-up that everyone who writes any Verilog or SystemVerilog at all should be aware of, tasks are static by default. If you do this: module top; task do_stuff ( int wait_time); #wait_time $display ( "waited %0d, then did stuff" , wa...
Read more

'git revert' Is Not Equivalent To 'svn revert'

I just learned that if you have some changes in your working tree that you want to get rid of, you don't type 'git revert' like you might guess. No, that's what cvs, subversion, mercurial, and bazaar (to name a few) use revert to mean, but not git. With git, revert is used to undo actual commits. Thankfully, you can undo your revert with another 'git revert', I just learned. So let me repeat to be clear, if you have changes to your working files that you want to abandon, DO NOT do this: git revert HEAD That will undo your last commit. Do this instead: git reset --hard HEAD I'm glad I have that straightened out now. I'm wondering if /etc was really a good place for me to start out playing with git. UPDATE: Nearly two years later and I'm still getting comments on this. I'm glad I've been able to help people out this way. The discussion in the comments is good, and one thing I'd like to point out is that I now always use...
Read more

SystemVerilog Streaming Operator: Knowing Right from Left

SystemVerilog has this cool feature that is very handy for converting one type of collection of bits into another type of collection of bits.  It's the streaming operator.  Or the streaming concatenation operator.  Or maybe it's the concatenation of streaming expressions (it's also called pack/unpack parenthetically).  Whatever you want to call it, it's nice.  If you have an array of bytes and you want to turn it into an int, or an array of ints that you want to turn into an array of bytes, or if you have a class instance that you want to turn into a stream of bits, then streaming is amazing.  What used to require a mess of nested for-loops can now be done with a concise single line of code. As nice as it is, getting the hang of the streaming operator is tough.  The SystemVerilog 1800-2012 LRM isn't totally clear (at least to me) on the details of how they work.  The statement from the LRM that really got me was this, "The stream_operator <...
Read more