[Telepathy] [ssh-contact] Why do I need X11 running and is there a workaround for avoiding it?

[Xavier Claessens]

On mar, 2011-08-23 at 15:11 +0200, Christophe-Marie Duquesne wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thank you for telepathy. I was impressed when I read about the tubes
> feature: sounds like a great way to interconnect applications!
> 
> I plan to write code using stream tubes and I wanted first to play
> with some program that uses them, so I have chosen ssh-contact. I
> installed it on a headless box and I tried to set it up. Here is what
> I get:
> ~/ > ssh-contact
> ** (ssh-contact:13703): DEBUG: Error: Unable to autolaunch a
> dbus-daemon without a $DISPLAY for X11

ssh-contact needs to connect to your session dbus-daemon to communicate
with your telepathy connections. I think dbus is using $DISPLAY to get
your session information, but you could define DBUS_SESSION_BUS_PID
and/or DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS manually probably.

> Well, this brings a first question:
> It seems like to run ssh-contact, you need X11 running. Why? Does
> telepathy depend on it? Or directly ssh-contact? Or is it a dbus
> thing? Is it something that we could avoid?

ssh-contact does not depend on X11 directly, but dbus may use it for
some session black magic... I'm not sure exactly how to avoid this but
it must be possible since I've seen dbus ports to windows.

> My second question:
> Is there a way to tweak my ~/.ssh/config and to use directly
> ssh-contact as a proxycommand for some hosts?

I'm not expert of ssh config, dunno if this is possible...

> Cheers,