[winswitch] Xpra Xorg launch sequence: using a unix domain socket in /tmp/.X11-unix

[Antoine Martin]

On 02/08/15 06:50, Timothy Hobbs wrote:
> Hey,
>
> I have finished implementing basic XPRA support in subuser. I haven't worked on getting mmap working yet, but I will do so shortly. I am currently planning the release of subuser 0.3 which will add XPRA support. You can read my draft press release here: http://subuser.org/news/0.3.html
>
> I have run into one problem, which is that when I launch the xpra server in a container the DPI isn't set correctly or something.  Take a look at this screen shot of the Arduino IDE for example: http://timothy.hobbs.cz/arduino.png
This is a known problem with the vfb servers, newer versions of xpra
give you a more helpful warning when you connect a client:
***
DPI set to 23 x 28 (wanted 96 x 96)
 you may experience scaling problems, such as huge or small fonts, etc
 to fix this issue, try the dpi switch, or use a patched Xdummy driver
***

Long story short: the X11 server assumes that the physical display has a
fixed size (which sounds like a fair assumption to make) and that when
you change the resolution, the DPI should change since the number of
pixels change.
In our case, there is no physical screen, only a virtual one, and so we
want the DPI to remain constant (or better, use the one we request) and
have the "phyiscal size" adjusted instead.
* using the "--dpi=96" switch works in most cases, but not for
applications which calculate their own DPI value by querying the X11
server for the physical screen size.
* using the patched dummy driver works better, but overrides a system
package...
Hopefully a better solution will land in Xorg soon, also allowing us to
define custom resolutions for the virtual display rather than trying to
find a match in the limited pre-defined list:
http://xpra.org/trac/ticket/56#comment:12

Then there's also the "Xft.dpi" display property (and the gnome
variant..) which we synchronize alrady, but which is blissfully ignored
by too many applications.
> You see the size of the text in the menu? Obviously I am going to have to transfer DPI info to xpra from the host. How should I go about doing that?
We already do that automatically, see the "wanted 96x96" in the log
sample above, this should match your client's settings.

Cheers
Antoine
>
> Thank you,
> Timothy Hobbs
>
> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 09:46:44AM +0700, Antoine Martin wrote:
>> I think the wiki could do with some improvements with regards to running
>> xpra with containers (feel free to edit), until then:
>> * make sure mmap is enabled (and you can even use a trimmed down build
>> without any video codecs, which is much safer)
>> * disable compression
>> The performance should be very close to native, if not then something is
>> not setup right.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Antoine
>> It appears that I have fixed my imediate problem. I was sharing
>> /tmp/.X11-unix using docker volumes, and I needed to run chmod 1777
>> /tmp/.X11-unix on it to get the permissions the way Xorg wants them :)
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 10:08:25PM +0200, Timothy Hobbs wrote:
>>> Dear list,
>>>
>>> I am the creator of subuser.org. Subuser is a free open source software
>> project (LGPL3) which aims to allow a person to run desktop applications
>> inside Docker containers. Subuser has several aims. One is to make it
>> easier to publish desktop applications on linux by improving portability.
>> Another is to make the desktop more secure by containing those desktop
>> applications within their respective containers.
>>> Right now, the seccond goal is not met. Desktop applications communicate
>> with the host's X11 server by sharing the /tmp/.X11-unix folder with it.
>> This works well, but is completely insecure. I have been waiting for
>> wayland to come out in order to provide a secure solution. However, spurred
>> on by the success of OZ, written by subgraph.com I have begun to reconsider
>> xpra as an intermediate option.
>>> As I want to maintain portability and ease of creating subuser Docker
>> images, I do not wish to install the xpra server in each Docker image which
>> contains a desktop application. In order to maintain this sepparation of
>> requirements, I have come up with the following architecture involving 3
>> containers:
>>> -------------                      -------------
>>> |desktop app| <--/tmp/.X11-unix--> |xpra server|    Untrusted
>>> -------------                      -------------
>>>                                          ^
>>>                                          | ~/.xpra
>>>                                          v
>>> -------------                       -------------
>>> | host      |  <--/tmp/.X11-unix--> |xpra client|   Trusted
>>> -------------                       -------------
>>>
>>> This allows me to run 3 containers.
>>>
>>> 1) contains the untrusted desktop application
>>> 2) contains an untrusted xpra server
>>> 3) contains a trusted xpra client
>>>
>>> I can use an up-to-date version of xpra, as I do not need to have xpra
>> installed on the host.
>>> The only problem, is that when I run
>>>
>>> $ xpra start :100 --start-child=xterm
>>>
>>> I don't end up with a unix domain socket in the xpra server's
>> /tmp/.X11-unix directory. This is despite the fact that I have -nolisten
>> tcp set in xpra.conf:
>>> xvfb=Xorg -dpi 96 -noreset -nolisten tcp +extension GLX +extension RANDR
>> +extension RENDER -logfile ${HOME}/.xpra/Xorg.${DISPLAY}.log -config
>> /etc/xpra/xorg.conf
>>> I am confused as to why this is happening, and how I can get a unix
>> domain socket to work with. I cannot use a UDP socket due to the
>> difficulties of sharing UDP sockets between containers.
>>> I have been testing this settup on xpra version 0.14.10
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance for your help,
>>>
>>> Timothy Hobbs
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> shifter-users at lists.devloop.org.uk
>>> http://lists.devloop.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/shifter-users
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