X forwarding for virt-manager to Windows

bgstack15

2017-08-29 09:48

Story time! When I was working on my virtual environment, I rebooted my main desktop. So I was stuck using my Windows desktop for a minute, and I wanted to work on my virtual machines. I decided to do some X forwarding, which for virt-manager on CentOS 7 needs some special steps.

On the server

The first thing is to install virt-manager. You also will need a piece of software named xauth, and some special fonts.

yum install -y virt-manager xauth dejavu-\*fonts

Reference: https://superuser.com/questions/119792/how-to-use-x11-forwarding- with-putty/119908#119908

On the client

On the Windows client, you should install an X server. I picked Xming. It also needs it fonts installed. Run Xming. Connect to server with PuTTY. You will need to configure PuTTY to allow X forwarding, and to use the right X server.

[![Screenshot of Putty configuration screen showing X11 forwarding

options](/2017/08/putty_x11_forwarding.jpg)](/2017/08/putty_x11_forwarding.jpg) Telling PuTTY to allow X11 forwarding to localhost:0

Notes

Unfortunately, my keyboard input to the virtual machine does not work when I have it configured with a spice display. But it works when I use a vnc display. See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1236412 for a closed bug report that has similar symptoms to this problem.

[![virt-manager settings of a virtual machine, showing where to change

display to VNC server type.](/2017/08/spice_vs_vnc.jpg)](/2017/08/spice_vs_vnc.jpg) Setting on virtual machine of VNC server or spice server.

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