Trying to get firefox running on CentOS 6 minimal iso - can't open display

Question

I've got minimal CentOS 6 running on an Oracle VirtualBox on a Mac. I'm trying to get Firefox up and running so I can download some web files into the VM.

I installed Firefox (yum --enablerepo=remi install firefox). I also installed Xserver (yum install xorg-x11-server-Xvfb) as I wasn't sure if it was included in the minimal OS install.

I then export DISPLAY=10.0.5.52 and then tried to start firefox but it said:

Error: can't open display: 10.0.5.52.

What do I need to do to get firefox to display?

Solution

Try doing this:

$ export DISPLAY=10.0.5.52:0

Then run Firefox again. Also be sure to run xhost + on the host 10.0.5.52 so that it's able to accept X applications being "sent" to it from other servers. This method is considered poor from a security stand point but is perfectly fine to use to confirm things are working properly. With that working, spend a bit more time considering your security posture in this use case and do something a bit more explicit using xhost +someremoteserver instead.

Also you could use ssh to tunnel the X application instead of using xhost. There's typically a bit of a performance hit but it's often tolerable and worth it in my opinion.

$ ssh -X someremoteserver firefox

excerpt from ssh man page

 -X     Enables X11 forwarding.  This can also be specified on a per-host 
        basis in a configuration file.

Comments

[Mark Plotnick]

Do you want Firefox to place its windows on the Mac or inside the CentOS window?

[debal]

why not download files using wget

[MikeA]

Xvfb is a virtual frame buffer and is not going to help you. wget/curl is your best bet if you want to stick as close as you can to the minimal package group you installed initially.

[slm]

@Jazzmine - you have to run the command xhost + on 10.0.5.52 as well. The permission denied is the other server disallowing the Firefox window from being sent.

[Jazzmine]

Ok, I just ran xhost + on the guest (VM) terminal and it automatically responded with xhost: Unable to open display "10.0.5.52:0"

[Jazzmine]

And a little bit more info: i got my ip address from the VM's ifconfig command and selected the inet ip address. Sound good?

[slm]

@Jazzmine - you ran xhost + on the host with the actual desktop, right?