06/04/2021 X windows for Oracle DBAs | ExaGridDba

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Database Administration

X windows for Oracle DBAs

Posted on August 12, 2019

By Brian Fitzgerald

Introduction

This is for DBAs on who want to use Oracle X-windows based tools such as OUI or DBCA.
Techniques described here can lead to a smooth installation experience. Beyond just a cookbook,
this blog article also demonstrates the principles behind X forwarding. Red Hat Linux on AWS EC2
is presented here as an example platform.

In hurry? Skip to tl;dr, at the end.

X-windows

The X windows system consists of a server, a display, and clients. The X server accepts requests
for graphical output from the clients and renders those requests on the display. In older usage, the
server and the client processes usually ran on the same host, a desktop Unix system. In the
present context, the X server runs on your Windows PC and displays to your screen. The X server
usually listens on TCP port 6000.

In X-windows lingo, applications and utilities are called clients. In the present context, clients run
on the Oracle host system, an instance of AWS EC2. Examples of clients include xterm and
Oracle Universal Installer (OUI), which run on separate server hardware. Our objective, therefore,
is to have an Oracle installation tool, such as OUI, and connect back to the X server on your PC
so you can view and control the graphical user interface (GUI). Paradoxically, the X server does
not run on “server” hardware, but on your windows PC. This table should clear up any confusion.

Description X Server X Client

Hardware PC server

Operating system Windows Linux

Has display monitor yes no

X server port (default 6000) binds connects to

listens
accepts connections

Software Xming xterm, dbca, etc.

The client application connects to the X server via sshd on Linux and via PuTTY on your PC.

AWS EC2

Red Hat Linux on Amazon EC2 is presented as an example platform. AWS EC2 instances are built
from an available Amazon Machine Image (AMI). For an Oracle installation, be sure to choose an

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AMI with a supported processor type, such as Intel x86_64 (not ARM), and a supported operating
system, such as Red Hat (not Ubuntu or Amazon Linux).

The final step in EC2 launch is to select an existing key pair or create and download a new key
pair. A key pair file from AWS has extension .pem.

Linux packages

Linux package installs are required before you can run X clients. In addition, it is helpful to install
basic troubleshooting tools.

After you launch a new EC2 instance, run yum update.

# yum -y update

Running yum update may get you a few new tools, such as lsipc and lsmem.

Depending on the AMI, you may find that basic Linux tools are missing. Installing those tools
makes troubleshooting easier. For example:

# yum -y install nc lsof unzip strace traceroute

You want to set up a working X windows environment, but before you do, notice three things from
the login shell:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-89-75 ~]$ echo $DISPLAY

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-89-75 ~]$ netstat -ntl | grep :60..

1. The DISPLAY environment variable is not set

2. There is no listener in the 6000 range
3. No file .Xauthority is present

Now install the X windows packages.

# yum -y install motif xorg-x11-utils xterm xauth

xterm here is for testing X windows.

In /etc/ssh/sshd_config, check:

X11Forwarding yes
X11UseLocalhost no

If necessary, edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config and then issue:

service sshd restart

After installing xauth, login using a new PuTTY session. On the first login, the following output will
appear:

/usr/bin/xauth: file /home/ec2-user/.Xauthority does not exist

Now recheck:

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[ec2-user@ip-172-31-89-75 ~]$ echo $DISPLAY

localhost:10.0
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-89-75 ~]$ netstat -ntl | grep :60..
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:6010 0.0.0.0:* LIST
tcp6 0 0 ::1:6010 :::* LIST

1. The DISPLAY environment variable is set

2. There is a new listener in the 6000 range.
3. A new .Xauthority file exists

The “10” in DISPLAY refers to the offset from 6000. When you set your DISPLAY to localhost:10.0,
all X clients will connect to port 6010 by default.

Notice which process is listening;

[root@ip-172-31-88-44 ~]# lsof -Pi :6010

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
sshd 1351 ec2-user 9u IPv6 20649 0t0 TCP localhost:6010 (L
sshd 1351 ec2-user 10u IPv4 20650 0t0 TCP localhost:6010 (L

The sshd process is listening on port 6010. You are going to run X-client application on the Linux
box. The client will connect to port 6010. The sshd process will forward the X-requests to your PC.

X server

There are several MS Windows-based X-servers available, Xming, for example. By default, the X
server listens on port 6000. Confirmation:

C:\>netstat -na | findstr :6000 | findstr LISTEN

TCP 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING

X server issues

CA N’T LOA D FONT

A message such as this appears

xterm: cannot load font -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75

Solution:

If you are using Xming, then install Xming fonts. For example: Xming-fonts-7-7-0-10-setup.exe

xdpyinfo

Behind the scenes, OUI runs xdpyinfo. If xdpyinfo is missing, this message will appear:

ERROR: Unable to verify the graphical display setup. This application re

To get xdpyinfo, install package xorg-x11-utils. An example of normal OUI output is:

Checking monitor: must be configured to display at least 256 colors. A

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Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.

Symptom:

You run ssh -X and observe a warning message such as:

brian@PQHKEA * xauth $ ssh -X -i ~/.ssh/acme-key.pem [email protected]

Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwardin
Last login: Sat Nov 7 18:31:30 2020 from pool-98-113-87-97.nycmny.fios.v

The message is from the local ssh client, not the remote host. You can confirm this by referring to
package https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable, file clientloop.c.

Fix:

xauth add :${DISPLAY#*:} . `mcookie`

Explanation.

:${DISPLAY#*:} gives you the DISPLAY value without the IP address.

mcookie a 128-bit random hexadecimal number for use with the X authority system

xterm issue

message:

Warning: locale not supported by C library, locale unchanged

Solution:

export LC_ALL=C

X libraries

The manual may instruct you to install certain X windows runtime libraries, or OUI may so instruct
you. The library list depends on the Oracle product and the version. Example:

yum -y install libX11 libXau libXi libXtst libXrender

If you have installed xterm, then you already have these dependent libraries.

mwm

mwm is the Motif Window Manager. It lets you move and resize windows. Without a window
manager, you may encounter situations where you have a dialog box waiting for input but is
inaccessible because it is behind another window. Here is the X root window after dragging three
windows to non-overlapping locations.

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The shell commands leading up to this were:

xterm & disown

mwm & disown
unzip -q ~/download/LINUX.X64_193000_db_home.zip
./runInstaller

Network

The X windows display technique described here assumes that you can connect via the secure
shell (ssh) from your PC directly to the Oracle server host. The AWS EC2 instance has a Public IP
address that is reachable from your PC.

The X windows protocol is a very “chatty” protocol, meaning that clients make a high number of
small server requests. Chattiness makes every button press on the GUI respond very slowly.
Having a fast network connection is essential. One might give some thought to enabling SSH
compression; however, SSH compression does not mitigate the chattiness.

Enabling SSH compression will usually not result in a noticeable improvement in responsiveness.

Running an X windows client across sudo

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In a prior section, xterm worked fine from the login shell (ec2-user). In practice, you will sudo to the
oracle account to execute runInsaller or dbca. You may also sudo to the grid account to run
gridSetup.sh. First, test xterm from the login account:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ echo $DISPLAY

localhost:11.0
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ xterm
(it works)

One thing you will notice here in this case is that the offset in the DISPLAY variable is 11. The
offset is not always 10, and depends on what port is available for X forwarding when you log in.

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ netstat -ntl | grep :60..

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:6010 0.0.0.0:* LIST
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:6011 0.0.0.0:* LIST
tcp6 0 0 ::1:6010 :::* LIST
tcp6 0 0 ::1:6011 :::* LIST

In this example, port 6010 was is in use when I logged in, so sshd started listening on port 6011
and set offset to 11.

If you try to run an X client across a sudo, you will get this error:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ sudo -i -u oracle

[oracle@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ xterm
xterm: Xt error: Can't open display:
xterm: DISPLAY is not set
[oracle@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ echo $DISPLAY

The DISPLAY environment setting did not carry over to the sudo shell. You can try setting
DISPLAY, but you will get a different error:

[oracle@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ export DISPLAY=localhost:11.0

[oracle@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ xterm
PuTTY X11 proxy: wrong authorisation protocol attemptedError: Can't open

To fix the authorization error, copy .Xauthority from the login account to the oracle account:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ sudo cp -up ~/.Xauthority ~oracle/.Xautho

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ sudo chown oracle:` id -gn oracle ` ~orac
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ sudo -i -u oracle
[oracle@ip-172-31-82-194 ~]$ xterm

To automate the copying, I added this code to the login user .bash_profile:

if [ -z "$SUDO_USER" -a -f ~/.Xauthority ] ; then

for u in oracle grid ; do
if id $u > /dev/null 2>&1 ; then
eval hd=~$u
sudo cp -up ~/.Xauthority $hd/.Xauthority
sudo chown $u:$(id -gn $u) $hd/.Xauthority
fi
done
fi

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To automate setting DISPLAY, I added this code to the oracle .bash_profile:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] ; then
for port in {6010..6019} ; do
if netstat -ntl | grep -q :$port ; then
offset=$(( port - 6000 ))
export DISPLAY=localhost:$offset.0
break
fi
done
fi

To summarize, before sudo, copy .Xauthority from the login account to oracle. After sudo, set the
DISPLAY environment variable. Automate those settings in .bash_profile.

puttygen

To connect PuTTY from Windows to AWS EC2 you need to generate a Putty Private Key (PPK)
file. Start with the PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail) file that you downloaded when you created your
EC2 instance. Startup PuTTY Key Generator (puttygen). Load the PEM file. Click Save private
key. Provide a name. Example:

us-east-1-key.pem
us-east-1-key.ppk

X forwarding with PuTTY

To establish a session with PuTTY, navigate the PuTTY screens and make these settings.

Screen Item Example

Session Host Name (or IP address) 3.86.243.42

Connection->Data Auto-login username ec2-user

Connection->SSH- Private key file for C:\Users\Brian Fitzgerald\.aws\us-east-1-

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>Auth authorization key.ppk

Connection->SSH- Enable X11 forwarding checked

>X11

Connection->SSH- X display location localhost:0.0

>X11

You may save your settings for future reuse.

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The private key file is the ppk file that you converted from the pem file.

X display location refers to the X server on your PC, and is usually localhost:0.0.

A simple command line example

Instead of using PuTTy, you could use ssh. This example uses bash on Windows Subsystem for
Linux. The hypothetical hosts are lcl and rem.

Generate your key

lcl $ ssh-keygen
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/bf/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
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Enter same passphrase again:

Your identification has been saved in /home/bf/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/bf/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:Jb9cfmEZI8r1FNe611gM0dBLYInq+/CXs35NPpSlB88 bf@lcl
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 2048]----+
| .o*=o|
| ....++|
| . o o =+.|
| * o +o=+|
| S + . =O+|
| o + .++E|
| .+ . +=.|
| .o = oo|
| .ooo+ .|
+----[SHA256]-----+

Copy your key to remote

lcl $ ssh-copy-id rem

/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: Source of key(s) to be installed: "/home/bf/
The authenticity of host 'rem (10.130.33.179)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:Gr8YlEJrgTQdsNMGXOZoU+6ugg4TPyX5B9lCLTE0
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: attempting to log in with the new key(s), to
/usr/bin/ssh-copy-id: INFO: 1 key(s) remain to be installed -- if you ar

bf@rem's password:

Number of key(s) added: 1

Now try logging into the machine, with: "ssh 'rem'"

and check to make sure that only the key(s) you wanted were added.

Set your DISPLAY

Startup Xming, then run:

lcl $ export DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0.0

ssh using the -X flag

lcl $ ssh -X rem

/usr/bin/xauth: file /home/bf/.Xauthority does not exist
rem $

test

rem $ xdpyinfo | wc
287 1136 9544

permit your .Xauthority file

rem $ chmod 750 ~

rem $ chmod 640 ~/.Xauthority

sudo to oracle

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rem $ sudo su - oracle

[sudo] password for bf:

copy .Xauthority

oracle@rem $ cp -p ~bf/.Xauthority .Xauthority

set your DISPLAY

oracle@rem $ export DISPLAY=10.130.33.179:10.0

test

oracle@rem $ xdpyinfo | wc
287 1136 9544

Oracle Universal Installer

oracle@rem $ cd /u01/download/oracle/em13400/
oracle@rem $ ./em13400_linux64.bin -J-Djava.io.tmpdir=/u01/tmp

Notes

DI SP L AY

rem $ echo $DISPLAY

10.130.33.179:10.0

Notice :10.0, not :0.0

P ORT S

rem $ netstat -nat | grep :60

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6010 0.0.0.0:* LIST
tcp6 0 0 :::6010 :::*

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Notice 6010, not 6000

F I LE

rem $ ls -l .Xauthority
-rw-------. 1 bf dba 100 Jul 6 17:41 .Xauthority

X forwarding via bastion host

You can use ssh from the Windows command line to setup X forwarding via a tunnel at the
bastion. Identify the following items:

item example

bastion key file us-east-1-key.pem

arbitrary Windows local port 3333

oracle box private IP address 172.31.95.14

ssh port 22

bastion host user brian

bastion public IP address 52.90.61.241

and use them as follows:

ssh -i keyfile -C -N -L localport:oraclebox:22 bastionuser@bastionhost

For example:

C:\>ssh -i us-east-1-key.pem -N -L 3333:172.31.95.14:22 [email protected]

The bastion key file is the pem file that you downloaded when you created the EC2 instance
The local port is a free port on your PC that you will choose arbitrarily.
The oracle box is the private IP address or the oracle box that you want to ssh to.
Bastion user is your login on the bastion host, i.e. ec2-user.
bastionhost is the public IP address of your bastion host.

Next, in a second cmd window:

set DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
ssh -i us-east-1-key.pem -Y -p 3333 ec2-user@localhost
Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwardin
Last login: Tue Nov 19 02:50:02 2019 from ip-172-31-88-110.ec2.internal
Last login: Tue Nov 19 02:50:02 2019 from ip-172-31-88-110.ec2.internal
ec2-user@ip-172-31-95-14 ~$ xterm

The requirements for the bastion host are different from the oracle box.

Establishing ssh trust from the bastion to the oracle box is not required.
The tunneling session is not responsible for X forwarding. Option -X is not required.
Disabling X11Forwarding at the bastion does not disable X forwarding as described here
because the X11 forwarding happens at the Oracle host and in PuTTY.
The bastion login user does not have to be the same as the oracle box login user.

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The bastion host does not have to be the same hardware or operating system architecture
as the oracle box. Amazon Linux works.
In some bastion EC2 systems, no configuration is required. ssh tunneling works out of the
box.
If the bastion /etc/ssh/sshd_config has “AllowTcpForwarding no”, then ssh tunneling is
disabled.

You do not need to log on to the bastion with an interactive shell. After the tunneling session is
established, you will not interact with it.

X windows without X11 forwarding

If you have a connection from Linux to the X11 port, usually 6000, on your PC, then you can
attempt X windows without X11 forwarding. You are going to set
DISPLAY=pc.dnsname.or.ipaddress:6000

Verify port 6000 with:

C:\>netstat -na | findstr LISTEN | findstr :6000

TCP 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING

“0.0.0.0:6000” refers to listening on port 6000 on all IP addresses on all network interfaces. If you
see

TCP 127.0.0.1:6000 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING

then your X server will not accept connections from outside your PC.

You can find your IP address with:

C:\>ipconfig | findstr Address

Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::f9f0:5830:cd8e:7502%24
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.7
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::85d7:7339:ff49:e5e6%51
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.74.113

The addresses shown in this example are private IP addresses. If the oracle box and the PC are
not on the same private network, you cannot refer to this address.

To get the NATted IP address you can use netstat:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ netstat -nat | grep :22 | grep ESTABLISHED

tcp 0 64 172.31.86.22:22 74.101.107.146:49459 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 172.31.86.22:22 74.101.107.146:54036 ESTABLISHED

or last:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ last -1ai ec2-user

ec2-user pts/1 Tue Aug 27 09:05 still logged in 74.101.107.146

The PC IP address is, therefore, 74.101.107.146. Instead of the IP address, you may refer to DNS
name. The DNS name appears when you login.

Using username "ec2-user".

Authenticating with public key "imported-openssh-key"
Last login: Mon Aug 26 15:57:51 2019 from pool-74-101-107-146.nycmny.fio
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or from last:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ last -1a ec2-user

ec2-user pts/1 Tue Aug 27 09:05 still logged in pool-74-101-

Before attempting runInstaller, test connectivity using nc

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ time nc -v 74.101.107.146 6000

Ncat: Version 7.50 ( https://nmap.org/ncat )
Ncat: Connection timed out.

real 0m10.029s
user 0m0.012s
sys 0m0.004s

By default, nc times out in 10 seconds.

If the nc connection times out, then an X-windows client will also time out.

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ export DISPLAY=74.101.107.146:0.0

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ time xterm
xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: 74.101.107.146:0.0

real 2m7.366s
user 0m0.021s
sys 0m0.016s

The TCP timeout depends on tcp_syn_retries

[root@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syn_retries

6

If tcp_syn_retries = 6, then the TCP timeout works out to 127 seconds, calculated thus:

You can monitor the connection in a separate window.

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ netstat -nat | grep :6000

tcp 0 1 172.31.86.22:36310 74.101.107.146:6000 SYN_

SYN_SENT lasting for a long time means that the connection is about to time out. runInstaller will
take more than twice as long as xterm does

to time out.

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[oracle@ip-172-31-86-22 dbhome_1]$ export DISPLAY=74.101.107.146:0.0

[oracle@ip-172-31-86-22 dbhome_1]$ time ./runInstaller
ERROR: Unable to verify the graphical display setup. This application re

Can't connect to X11 window server using '74.101.107.146:0.0' as the val

real 4m17.524s
user 0m2.835s
sys 0m0.303s

First, xdpyinfo times out:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ ps -t pts/1

PID TTY TIME CMD
3324 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
11279 pts/1 00:00:00 sudo
11281 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
11311 pts/1 00:00:00 runInstaller
11315 pts/1 00:00:00 xdpyinfo

Then OUI (java) times out:

[ec2-user@ip-172-31-86-22 ~]$ ps -t pts/1

PID TTY TIME CMD
3324 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
11279 pts/1 00:00:00 sudo
11281 pts/1 00:00:00 bash
11311 pts/1 00:00:00 runInstaller
11436 pts/1 00:00:00 perl
11455 pts/1 00:00:01 java

To save time, test your connection using nc, before attempting runInstaller.

dbca issues

dbca NoClassDefFoundError: sun.awt.X11.XToolkit

The DISPLAY environment variable is set, but this messsage appears:

[oracle@ip-172-31-88-246 ~]$ dbca

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could n
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:264)
at java.awt.Toolkit$2.run(Toolkit.java:860)
at java.awt.Toolkit$2.run(Toolkit.java:855)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Meth
at java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit(Toolkit.java:854)
at com.jgoodies.looks.LookUtils.isLowResolution(LookUtils.
at com.jgoodies.looks.LookUtils.(LookUtils.java:249)
at com.jgoodies.looks.plastic.PlasticLookAndFeel.(PlasticL
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:348)

Cause: The X server is down or not reachable. Troubleshoot as you would an xterm issue, such
as:

[oracle@ip-172-31-88-246 ~]$ xterm

xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: localhost:10.0

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Client startup step by step

If you follow these steps one at a time and resolve issues as you go, it is less likely that you will
encounter difficulty when you try to run an Oracle tool

In PuTTY, configure X11 forwarding.

Connect PuTTY and log in.
Check the DISPLAY environment variable.
Test xterm.
Test xdpyinfo.

xdpyinfo > /dev/null

copy .Xauthority to the oracle account.

sudo to oracle.
Set the DISPLAY environment variable.
Test xterm again.
startup mwm.
finally, start your Oracle tool. Ex:

./runInstaller

Summary

It is extremely helpful to configure a proper Linux and X windows environment before attempting to
run an Oracle tool such as OUI. Commands nc, lsof, strace, traceroute, lsipc, and lsmem were
used while writing this blog article. From xorg-x11-utils, xlsclients and xev were used. From motif,
mwm was used. xauth is required for X windows. An oracle installation may require unzip and
xdpyinfo. Not all needed utilities installed by default. You must install them yourself.

If you Google “x windows forwarding not working” you will find cases where one person’s advice
works for one person and not another. Trying random tips and tricks without understanding can
lead to your own solutions that don’t work all the time, and enabling unnecessary options. To
improve understanding, I have added diagnostic output from netstat and lsof.

Be sure to understand that the X server runs on your PC and listens on port 6000 by default. On
the oracle box, sshd listens on port 6000 + an offset, often 10. Setting DISPLAY=localhost:10.0 will
lead X clients to connect to the sshd listening on port 6010 on the local host. sshd will forward the
X traffic back to the X server on your PC.

It is well to break up the setup and testing into multiple, simple steps, rather than attempting to
startup runInstaller in one go.

tl;dr

Install needed packages

Copy .Xauthority to the oracle account
Set the DISPLAY environment variable

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