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I've always wanted to get X11 Forwarding to work with PuTTY, and the X Window System I'm using is Xming. When I have Xming running and I establish a new connection to my server, I receive the following after a command:

$ firefox
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attemptedPuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attemptedError: cannot open display: localhost:10.168

$ google-chrome
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attempted
(google-chrome:7083): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: localhost:10.168

$ gedit
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attempted
** (gedit:6990): WARNING **: Could not open X display
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attemptedCannot open display:
Run 'gedit --help' to see a full list of available command line options.

$ gnome-system-monitor
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attempted
** (gnome-system-monitor:7024): WARNING **: Could not open X display
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authentication protocol attempted
(gnome-system-monitor:7024): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: localhost:10.168

How do I fix these errors and get X11 Forwarding to work as a whole?

NobleUplift
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5 Answers5

17

I had 2 problems and found this question had the closest problems to mine, so thought my solution would be helpful to others who get here, trying to fix the same problem as me. My system has Cygwin/X (xinit 1.3.4-5), and PuTTY (0.64). I managed to get to the bottom of it by setting both --listen tcp on the local startxbin and passing the path to .Xauthority to putty.

Firstly, in reference to the "PuTTY X11 proxy: unable to connect to forwarded X server: Network error: Connection refused" error, you need to make the X session listen for connections: Open a cygwin terminal and edit /usr/bin/startxwin find the line...

defaultserverargs="-multiwindow"

and change it to...

defaultserverargs="-multiwindow -listen tcp"

Secondly, in response to the "Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified" error, you need to make putty use the correct xauth tokens (something strange seems to go on inside putty so xauth list locally doesn't give tokens that the forwarded connection can use by passing them in xauth add <token>, they seem to need to be set by PuTTY on connection, in order for them to work).
Find the path, in the windows domain, where your ~/.Xauthority file is by running (in cygwin terminal again)

cd ~
explorer .

Check out the properties on the .Xauthority file and make a note of the Location to it (select it and press CTRL+C to put it in clipboard).

Start PuTTY as in the example above (copied from http://www.math.umn.edu/systems_guide/putty_xwin32.html)

On the 'Options controlling SSH X11 forwarding' page, you should have 'Enable X11 forwarding' checked, and 'MIT-Magic-Cookie-1' set as the protocol.
Under the 'X authority file for local display' field, click Browse and using the Location to the .Xauthority file you made a note of earlier, find the .Xauthority file. Click Open to populate the field, then go back to Session (in PuTTY configuration) and save the session. Then you can click open.

It should now allow you to connect.

sibaz
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    I also needed to set the `X authority file for local display` to point to my `.Xauthority` folder in my `cygwin` home directory. Thank you! – HeatfanJohn Oct 05 '15 at 21:24
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Copied from: http://www.math.umn.edu/systems_guide/putty_xwin32.html

Configuring Putty

  • Add Unix hostname
  • Switch Protocol to SSH
  • Type name of session in saved sessions
  • Click 'Save'

<img src='putty_xwin32/default_putty_rev-sm.png'/>

  • Expand the 'SSH' tab from the 'Category' list
  • Choose 'X11' from 'SSH' list
  • Check 'Enable X11 Forwarding'

<img src='putty_xwin32/xfwd_putty_rev-sm.png'/>

  • Choose 'Session' from 'Category' list
  • Click 'Save'

Starting the X Server on Windows

Configuring Xming

Just run "All Programs > Xming Xming" and it should work if you've got PuTTY configured.

Connecting

  • Start Xming
  • Start Putty
  • Double click on the saved session you want

<img src='putty_xwin32/session_putty_rev-sm.png'/>

  • Enter username and password as requested
  • You should now be able to run X applications from the host on your local desktop

EDIT: To fix the wrong authentication protocol attempted error, try enabling “ForwardX11Trusted yes” in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and then restart the OpenSSH server.

Kruug
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  • I literally read the exact same guide (it's how I found out about Xming), but found it completely useless otherwise because it either told me things I already knew or could figure out just by running the two programs. – NobleUplift May 07 '13 at 02:28
  • I was kind of able to get X11 forwarding working, but I suppose this answer is the limit as to what you can do for it. I don't know why my question took a -1 though... – NobleUplift Oct 19 '13 at 22:34
  • How does it solve the problem. It is just a tutorial to configure x over ssh. – user568109 Nov 20 '13 at 05:56
  • @user568109 If you follow these directions and then attempt to call any GUI-based program, it will display locally. – Kruug Nov 20 '13 at 14:52
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    `ForwardX11Trusted` us a client-side setting. Putting this into `sshd_config` will have no effect at best and will prevent the SSH server from starting up at worst. -1. This is `sshd_config` versus `ssh_config` if you are looking for `man` pages. – 0xC0000022L Aug 07 '14 at 00:02
  • "wrong authentication protocol..." occurs when you're `sudo`'ing. The user creds are different. You can get around this by piping some information from your user account to xauth add... `su - YOURUSERNAME -c 'xauth list' | grep `echo $DISPLAY | cut -d ':' -f 2 | cut -d '.' -f 1 | sed -e s/^/:/` | xargs -n 3 xauth add` – Basic Nov 21 '15 at 03:16
  • It sure solved the problem for me. – schoon May 13 '20 at 15:50
  • This solution works if I'm able to ssh into the server from my windows i.e. there's no gateway server in between but if there's a gateway server between my windows machine and the server on which I need to run wireshark then I get "(wireshark:7362): Gtk-WARNING **: 18:00:56.754: cannot open display:" – Vishal Sharma Dec 23 '20 at 12:37
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My steps, using DISPLAY 20 (since the default may be already used)

On Windows,

C:\Program Files (x86)\Xming>xming :20 -ac

On Putty, create reverse port forwarding e.g. 6020 in remote to same port in local windows:

enter image description here enter image description here

On the unix side:

export DISPLAY=:20
<your visual app>
Jose Manuel Gomez Alvarez
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  • Great! This doesn't require any SSH X11Forwarding settings. Works great in my case on Windows with vcXsrv. Thanks! – Cleric Oct 26 '22 at 09:21
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Kruug’s solution worked for me with few additional steps as given below.

As I was logging in with ec2-user and later switching to oracle user. Make sure the .Xauthority file is copied over to oracle user’s home.

cp /home/ec2-user/.Xauthority /home/oracle/

How did I test? I installed xclock

yum install xclock

Then I ran xclock (Wait for few seconds, if you are getting a small pop-up window of analog clock, all good)

xclock
nddprasanth
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You can 

xauth list

then 

xauth add <your display>