This feature refers to the ability of using an existing display server (an existing desktop session, usually connected to a real physical display) and use xpra to access it remotely.
It is supported on all platforms including MS Windows and Mac OS X,
but not on Wayland.
It is not optimized on all platforms and may cause high CPU load on both
the server and the client in some cases.
On most platforms, the display being shadowed must be active: not locked or turned off.
If you have SSH access to the machine whose X11 display you wish to access remotely, simply run from your client:
xpra shadow ssh://HOST/
This will connect over SSH to HOST
, start and xpra
shadow server and connect to it.
The shadow server will be stopped once you disconnect.
Xpra must already be installed on the server.
xpra info ssh://HOST/DISPLAY
), and it will show a system
tray menu whilst active, and a different icon when a client is
connected: If starting via SSH is not supported as above, as is the case on most MS Windows and MacOS systems, or simply if you want to start the shadow server manually, and potentially configure more options, you can start it from a shell.
To expose your existing main display session (usually found at
:0
on *nix) using a TCP server on port 10000:
xpra shadow :0 --bind-tcp=0.0.0.0:10000
Notes: * this is insecure and does not cover authentication or encryption * MS Windows and Mac OS
X do not have X11 display names (:0
in the example above),
in this case you can simply omit the display argument * if there is only
a single $DISPLAY
active on the system, you do not need to
specify it (no :0
) * do not shadow an existing seamless or desktop xpra session when
you can just attach to it
-d ssh
debug logging
switch.