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Before you begin: When using a computer off-campus, you may first need to connect to Purdue's Virtual Private Network. Remember, Purdue Login 2FA (formerly BoilerKey) is REQUIRED to access this service.
To run X applications in Windows, please follow these steps:
- Start the X server program: VcXsrv or XMing (If you do not have any installed, you can download VcXsrv at https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/ or XMing at https://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/ if your computer is self-supported or personally-owned)
- For VcXsrv, download and run the installer.
- For XMing, click on the Xming icon in the Start menu to start Xming.
- Use SecureCRT to connect to the server where you will be running the software. (SecureCRT is pre-installed on Purdue IT-supported Windows PCs. If you are using a "self-supported" or personally-owned computer, you may download SecureCRT.)
- Make sure that SecureCRT has X11 packet forwarding set. You can do that in SecureCRT by clicking: Options->Sessions Options, then expanding the menus Connection->Port Forwarding->Remote/X11, and checking the Forward X11 packets box. You should only need to set this once if you save your settings after setting X11 forwarding (Options->Save Settings Now). See Fig. 1.
- After entering your login and password, run the X application from the SecureCRT window.
If you have any problems starting the X application, try running a different X application in order to confirm that the X-server and SecureCRT are working. You can try running xclock (/usr/bin/xclock) to see if it works. Also, make sure that SecureCRT has X11 forwarding turned on.
