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:
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If the environment variable SM_DISPLAY is set, its value is passed to the Global Manager.
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If the environment variable DISPLAY is set, its value is passed to the Global Manager.
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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.
