[clug] ssh vs. firefox

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

I must be missing something simple but this is something I noticed
some time ago but forgot.

I am on my workstation (f9). I ssh to my main server (f11).
I launch firefox from ssh command line and surely it opens a
window. But it is in fact another window of the workstation
firefox (so it runs on my ws).

My problem is that opening a file, say /tmp, shows the
directory on my ws rather than the one on my server
(where it was launched from). Similarly all the settings
are the ones from my ws.

If I start xclock it does start a remote client which opens on my
ws Xserver.

What is going on?

I know that firefox can remotely request a running instance to
open another window (giving a URL) but I understood that it is
communicating with the the executable. It seems that the
communication channel actually goes through the Xserver. Is
this the case?

e4 is my ws, e7 my server:

TIA

[eyal at e4 ~]$ ssh e7
Last login: Sat Aug 22 22:15:09 2009 from e4.eyal.emu.id.au
[eyal at e7 ~]$ echo $DISPLAY
localhost:10.0
[eyal at e7 ~]$ firefox
[eyal at e7 ~]$ ps aux|grep firefox
eyal     16989  0.0  0.0  89004   780 pts/0    S+   22:17   0:00 grep firefox
[eyal at e7 ~]$ ps aux|grep [f]irefox
[eyal at e7 ~]$

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky	(eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)