[Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Hello!

http://tablethacker.com/screenshot07.png

AirX is a GUI for X Forwarding. What that means is that it enables you to use any program you have on your Linux PC on your tablet. Nice, hm? There are some nice improvements in 0.3.

Check out the video HERE. (Pay no attention to mother in the background :o)

The original AirX was just an introduction to programming for myself, but I wanted to make something useful out of it now.

http://tablethacker.com/screenshot09.png

The ease of administrating my home server from anywhere without the need of a command line is wonderful.

I don't have to type in my user name, password, IP address, or anything else. AirX remembers it for me and lets me run whatever I need easily and simply.

You can grab AirX HERE and try it out :D (Pexpect must be installed, too. It is on that page.

Please post any bugs, explosions, or suggestions here!

Oh, and you're really awesome if you can name the background music in the video... ;)

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

I haven't had the time to try it out but it looks awesome. This is without any encryption is it? How is the performance compared to vnc?

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

This is encrypted :D This is much safer and much faster than VNC. It will allow you to run only what you need (an individual program OR a whole desktop like KDE) instead of just throwing the whole screen at you like VNC does.

This goes through SSH and is pretty damn secure :)

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Thanks! This very cool. I just installed it, logged into my Ubuntu box, launched Thunderbird, downloaded and read email. No problems. One question at this point, how do I add a program to the drop down list?

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

I know where it's from. (Zelda). Though I've never heard that version before.. who is it?

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Why did I not think of that... :o You can't do it easily atm, but that should be fixed soon...

@Laughing Man: Correct! That is the Darkworld Theme. Written by Koji Kondo and arranged by... Well, I didn't catch his name :o

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

watched the video... just wondering, does this support full screen?

thanks

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Insert "any change for a gregale ITOS2006 version?" here.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

I tried connecting from my n800 running Diablo to my notebook running Xubuntu Hardy. when I run airx from the commandline, fill in the form and press 'Launch program' nothing happens and on the commandline I see:

I can ssh into my notebook, and from the notebook to the tablet though.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

well, i just installed to see if it would do full screen, and right now, it does not. less useful than first imagined. vnc will do until this goes fullscreen , and is configurable for what you wish to run. Great first effort!! will test connectivity on my laptop and servers later this evening.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Works like a charm! Apps refreshed much faster than VNC. Keep up the great work!

My wishlist:
- some sort of spinner when it is doing something
- if you don't select an app to launch before pressing launch, just fail immediately rather than going into lala-land for a while
- a simple means of switching to a non-default ssh port ... I'm guessing that you can just add ":xxx" to the end of the host IP string but I haven't tried since I am using the default port at the moment.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

What do you mean it does not do full screen? Whether or not AirX itself is fullscreen has no effect whatsoever on any applications you forward. If the program your forwarding supports full screen, then you can use it.

But, there is no reason for the AirX gui to go fullscreen, that's why I didn't put the option in. More lines of code...

VNC has nothing on X-forwarding, whether or not you run it from AirX or the terminal.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

That is certainly odd... Hm. The only time I would get an error like this is when I enter the wrong username or password. Maybe you SSH port is different than normal? Add the port onto the ip, I believe 192.168.1.100:xxx

I can't imagine why it would do that... I'll look in to it asap!

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

It should run just fine on any version so long as python2.5 and openssh are available... I'm not sure if they are, though, for 2006?

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Thanks for the great suggestions!! :D

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

every application in your list supports fullscreen on ubuntu, but as it is windowed by a call from your software, it will not allow me to use the full screen button on anything i launch from my server....

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

ssweet try it as soon as i get to bed. :)

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

That's because the full screen button on the tablet is F6, while on a desktop it is F11. The tablet's hardware button will not work. Just open firefox and go to

View > Fullscreen

Simple.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Hi, great program, thanks!

Would you happen to have any idea why this or other X forwarding won't properly launch a java program through Firefox? I've been trying to use Party Poker's java applet to play (http://www.partypoker.com/anywhere/) and it won't load, firefox starts and then I get the loading screen for the poker applet but the game itself never starts. I've actually noticed the same with two computers (Ubuntu 8.04 laptop to Ubuntu 8.04 desktop) with "ssh -X firefox", I can't get the java applet to launch. Any ideas why this could be and what I could do to get it to work? Since the tablet doesn't do java, this would be a great way to get poker on it.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

that works for software that has a menu item for View -> Fullscreen, but what about software that only supports window modes, and has no menu option?

Is there a way to send an F11 from the tablet?

thanks for the replies!

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Ok I figured it out. For some reason the ~/.Xauthority on my notebook was owned by root. Changed it back to my own and problem went away. For those wondering how to run a different app. You can do X-forwarding from the commandline as well:

- Open xterm
- type (replace 'username' and 'host' with the remote username and ip address)
(fill in password)
type name of the app
I wonder if these things are possible with X-forwarding:

- use maemos on screen keyboard. I have an n800 so I can't use the hardware keyboard.
- use a local or remote GTK theme
- hear sound
- maximize windows without relying on per application 'maximize' buttons
<edit> Found a way to do this, be it a bit hackish:
</edit>

Also it doesn't seem much faster than Tightvnc over ssh using some compresion and optimalization (though only minimal, you can go quite far with compression on tightvnc) like I described on the wiki.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

v0.3 doesn't work for me:

~ $ airx
Woo
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/airx", line 152, in <module>
execfile("/home/user/airxhost.py")
IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/user/airxhost.py'

v0.1 was ok. Uninstalling it before installing v0.3 doesn't fix problem.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

That means AirX could not create a file in your home directory.

Are you running it as root or user? Or, have you ever accessed your tablet via ssh? Permissions on that folder may have been inadvertently changed whilst doing something.

AirX checks for that file at every start-up, and if it does not exist, it attempts to create a blank one. Failing that, it gives you that error.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Thanks so much for making this available Aisu!

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

aaahh i'm geting an error:mad:
wiki wiki wiki?
ERROR!
SSH could not loging. Here is what SSH said:
<class "pexpect.TIMEOUT'>
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/airx", line 195, in abd
child.expect(pexpect.EOF)
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'expect'

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

I had the same problem. Although, I was able to do "touch /home/user/airxhost.py" as the tablet default user fine and the application started up.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Is pexpect installed?

I had previously worked this one out in a weird way...

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Thanks, Qwerty. I'll have to look into running a touch before letting AirX just die...

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

VNC is nice on occasion, of course! (Many thanks for that guide, too.)

A VNC session is not as secure as (most) ssh sessions, right? But, then it suggests running VNC through SSH, which is a little redundant when all you need is SSH....

I will do my best to add a full screen option in the next release, too :D

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

Tnanks, now in started, but with same error as in msg #27. pexpect installed.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

yup pexpect is installed on my IT.

Re: [Announce] AirX 0.3
 

For me, command line ssh is better. Why? Because you can run any app with any parameters, its the same amount of typing, etc...

Does airX use compression, aka ssh -XC xxx.xxx.xxx ?