X11 Forwarding in SSH for Solaris and Linux

You might be wonder what is fun in this blog looking for X11 forwarding on Solaris 5.10!! You might be excited to see the beauty of colorful Oracle Fusion Middleware WebLogic 11g installation window when you executable binaries (wls1033_solaris32.bin), You might wish to see Oracle WebLogic domain configuration Wizard (config.sh), Oracle WebLogic Domain Template builder(config_builder.sh), BEA Smart Update (bsu.sh) windows or your Oracle Database 11g while you work on a remote UNIX machines.

After spending few hours on the Internet found many blogs written on their experiences, few document on websites, which illustrated about SSH, X11 forwarding in UNIX. I understand that what I need to do? To achieve my objective X11 Forwarding using SSH window, I must have a X emulating software installed on my desktop. you guys have this on your desktop?? If not install Hummingbird Connectivity (Xming is alternative)

My experimenting environment is Solaris 10, Oracle WebLogic, SSH (You can use Putty also), Hummingbird Connectivity (Xming is alternative)

Applicable to:
This you can use for any Java AWT or Swing programs in any UNIX based Operating environment.
You might download free Hummingbird Software also providing evaluation version who want to test their environment.

Here I am sharing with smart guys WLA/DBA my version of brain storming on this. When I first-time tried to invoke X window command it rejected and told as shown below:

No X11 DISPLAY variable was set, but this program performed an operation which requires it.

I had updated DISPLAY variable as follows

$ export DISPLAY=localhost:11.0

My first experiment with normal UNIX user
When I executed bsu.sh script I got the following in Normal UNIX user:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class
sun.awt.X11GraphicsEnvironment
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:169)
at java.awt.GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment(GraphicsEnvironment.java:68)
at sun.awt.X11.XToolkit.(XToolkit.java:89)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:169)
at java.awt.Toolkit$2.run(Toolkit.java:834)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(Toolkit.java:826)
at sun.swing.SwingUtilities2$AATextInfo.getAATextInfo(SwingUtilities2.java:126)
at javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel.initComponentDefaults(MetalLookAndFeel.java:1556)
at javax.swing.plaf.basic.BasicLookAndFeel.getDefaults(BasicLookAndFeel.java:130)
at javax.swing.plaf.metal.MetalLookAndFeel.getDefaults(MetalLookAndFeel.java:1591)
at javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.java:541)
at javax.swing.UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.java:581)
at javax.swing.UIManager.initializeDefaultLAF(UIManager.java:1343)
at javax.swing.UIManager.initialize(UIManager.java:1432)
at javax.swing.UIManager.maybeInitialize(UIManager.java:1420)
at javax.swing.UIManager.getDefaults(UIManager.java:660)
at javax.swing.UIManager.put(UIManager.java:989)
at com.bea.plateng.common.ui.gui.GUIHelper.initPLAF(GUIHelper.java:69)
at com.bea.plateng.patch.gui.PatchGUIHelper.startGui(PatchGUIHelper.java:90)
at com.bea.plateng.patch.Patch.main(Patch.java:338)

My UNIX admin buddy told that dear, first try with xclock then go for other, then I thought Ohhh!! that's good idea, let me try that...

$ xclock
bash: xclock: command not found

Hmmmmmmm!!, what is this? Think, Think Think!!!, On a Solaris 5.10 you can find some of the commands in OpenSource folder, Let me try in that path this xclock on the following path.
/usr/openwin/bin/xclock

No luck buddy, same kind of error message as bsu.sh got above.

Now I realized and verified all those PATH, CLASSPATH are pointing to proper JAVA_HOME/bin, lib paths respectively, one of them is misconfigured reset to correct path.

One of Sun blog saying about Updating $Home/.ssh/config file as follows:

Host *
ForwardX11 yes
ForwardAgent no

After doing this I had ran the following:

$ ssh -X user@hostname

This is the command will activallte the X emulation on your UNIX machine with given SSH configuration. Actually it will refer to the default configuration /etc/.ssh/config but when you create new config file on your user home directory it will prefer to execute for your user settings. This command also updates .Xauthority file when you ssh -X command.

Verified every step again finally I got X window for xclock

Hey!! Cheerup on my face!!

Experiment 2: LDAP user logon with assume user name as 'pavanwla', switched to role 'wladmin'. I started trying on it for X11 forwarding. First Let me try, xclock on

-->

[wladmin@hostname~]$ /usr/openwin/bin/xclock
Error: Can't open display:

Ohh its same DISPLAY variable problem right? You remember it!!

[wladmin@hostname~]$ export DISPLAY=localhost:10.0
[wladmin@hostname~]$ echo $DISPLAY
localhost:10.0

Let me try now, what it will say...

[wladmin@hostname~]$ /usr/openwin/bin/xclock
X connection to localhost:10.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown)

Oh My Gash!!! what to do now????????????
After a while, I bugged again my buddy Mr. Unix Admin about this. He told that configurations, X emulating authoriy must match ldap user and role. Now my turn, first I tried to get xclock on ldap user, that confirms everything fine at ldap user level. This configuration, Xauthority I can use in role user too, then see what I did:

[wladmin@hostname~]$ scp pavanwla@hostname:/home/pavanwla/.ssh/config .ssh/
[wladmin@hostname~]$scp pavanwla@hostname:/home/pavanwla/.Xauthority .

Started ssh session with ssh -X command.

Finally, the climax came to end, xclock started. ahh!!
Reference:
https://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/files/Xming/6.9.0.31/Xming-6-9-0-31-setup.exe/download
http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15051_01/common/smartupdate/guide/quickrefax.html

Configuring Plain NodeManger on Solaris

Today morning one of my buddy pinged me from my team, seeking help on an issue he is faceing in his newly  configured WL domain for his learnings.

Understanding the Issue
My buddy novice WLA is trying to start the WebLogic instance on a remote machine. He is working on Solaris 10 operating environment, WebLogic 9.2. I asked for Java version, He executed the following command:

$ java -version

I asked for jps command execution the system is refused and said that ' jps is bad cammand'. I understand that  JAVA_HOME is not set for his environment. asked for echo $PATH. It is showing Java Path. Ohh!! what is missing then??

$which java
this resulted that JAVA_HOME is NOT set to weblogic installation JDK, it was pointed to JAVA_HOME come with the Solaris installation.  I understand that could be one of the reason of not starting the server instance. Update the .profile file with  JAVA_HOME as required to set JDK residing in WebLogic installation path.

What is your NodeManager saying?
My buddy located the logs and found the following line
javax.net.ssl.SSLKeyException: [Security:090482]BAD_CERTIFICATE

To avoiding this Exception you must have certificate generated and installed as requested bye nodemanager. Why we need this SSL certificate? Open the WebLogic Admin console, found that he is working with SSL type of Node Manager. If you don't have secure certificates to configure you should not use SSL type nodemanager. I suggested better to use "Plain" type for the NodeManager configuration on the machine for learning purpose.  Change it in the admin console and save the changes.

Redefining NM properties

You need to update few NodeManager properies on every machine your domain is configured.

Machine wise changes
ListenAddress=yourmachineip
ListenPort=5557

Common "Plain" setting for all the machines involved in domain
SecureListener=false

Stop the Admin server and managed servers (if any running) stop the NodeManger in all machines the domain configured.


Now, First start the NodeManager in the which Admin server residing then start the Admin Server. After Admin Server starting all the domain configuration details will be captured by NodeManager on that machine and ready for communicate with remote NodeManagers. Next, Start the NodeManager on the remote Machine(s) . 

Finally, start the remote server using admin console.  to start your remote managed server make sure that your admin server, Node Managers on admin machine and remote machines must be running without any ERROR or WARN messages. Conclude your configuration is successful by checking the Node Manager logs, and on the admin console check the server state

Note that jps command will list all java processes which includes NodeManager process too.
$jps
12121 NodeManager
4544 Server

Further References for Secure NodeManager:
1. SSL Node Manager configuration
2. Fisal SSL