This document will cover the use of PuTTY and Xming to pipe graphical Solaris apps to a remote Windows-based PC. Since many old Solaris apps couldn't function in any more than 8 bit planes, the example configuration of Xming (X Server) in this document is specifically set to 8-bit color. This switch allows old apps to run without error on a higher bit plane desktop.

Because SSH (and X over SSH tunneling) was not available by default on older Solaris systems, this example will focus on using the telnet protocol for shell access.

Downloading Files

This setup will require two programs. PuTTY, which is used to access the shell on Unix machines, and Xming, an open source X server for viewing graphical apps on remote machines. They can be dowloaded here:

PuTTY
Xming

It is also recommended (but not required) that you download and install the extended font packs on the Xming website.

Configuring PuTTY

PuTTY, is used to access the command line of your Solaris machine. For convienience, it's recommended that you create a default connection to your Solaris machine. This only needs to be done once. This can be done by starting up PuTTY and doing the following:

1. Entering the hostname/IP addess in the field labeled Host Name (or IP address).
2. Selecting the Telnet radio button under Connection Type.
3. Clicking Default Settings under the Saved Sessions.
4. Clicking on the Save button.

Once the default configuration has been set, PuTTY will load up the connection information for your Solaris machine each time it is started up.

To get an X Server loaded easily each time, we'll create a file on the Windows Desktop called "xming.bat". This can be done with Wordpad, saving the file as type Text Document - MS-DOS Format. As for switches passed into the app, they are as follows. Since we're on a private network, we'll disable access control (-ac). Because some old Sun apps require 8-bit color, we'll force 8 with (-depth 8). And finally, depth mode requires the use of full screen, so we'll enable that (-fullscreen). The following text should be in the file:

cd C:\Program Files\Xming\
Xming.exe -ac -depth 8 -fullscreen

After everything is installed and configured, we can connect to our Solaris machine and run our graphical apps. To do this we start out by running PuTTY and telneting into the Solaris machine. Enter the username and password at the login prompt.

Next we'll have to tell Solaris where to send the images of the graphical programs we're running. For this example, we'll assume the IP address of the Windows PC you are on is 192.168.1.25. In this case we would type the following at the Solaris command prompt:

setenv DISPLAY 192.168.1.25:0.0

Next we need to start the X Server on our PC. This can be done by running the xming.bat file we created earlier. This will start a full screen X server. However we'll need to switch back to our command prompt to run the applications on our Solaris machine. You can do this by pressing Alt-Tab. This will switch you out of Xming, and back to your current applications.

To test that all is working, you can go back to PuTTY, and at the command prompt type "textedit". This will run the default graphical text editor built into Solaris. If all goes well, you can use Alt-Tab to switch back to Xming, and you'll find the textedit app displayed on your Windows PC.