Running tools over X Windows

If necessary, you can configure a server tool to invoke an X Windows application. The console user that invokes such an action must run an X server in order to display the X window. When the Global Console attaches to the
Global Manager
, it passes the user’s display information to the
Global Manager
.
The Global Console determines a user’s display by using the following rules:
  • If the environment variable SM_DISPLAY is set, its value is passed to the
    Global Manager
    .
  • If the environment variable DISPLAY is set, its value is passed to the
    Global Manager
    .
  • The value is set to
    <host>
    :0.0 where
    <host>
    is the name of the user’s system.
    Because X Windows applications are typically long running, take special care when writing the tool script to avoid unwanted interactions with the tool timeout. You should write the tool script so that the X Window application runs in the background. This allows the tool script to exit and the
    Global Manager
    to stop the timeout. If the tool’s script runs in the foreground, the
    Global Manager
    terminates the process when the timeout expires.
    The
    sm_xcmd
    utility is provided by
    VMware Smart Assurance
    for executing an X Windows application in the background. The utility performs a basic connectivity test of the user's X Windows display. The ics-telnet.sh server tool is an example of a tool script that uses sm_xcmd to run an application over X Windows.