While checking out a user query this morning I stumbled across something quite bizarre: I launched Firefox from an (X-forwarded) ssh session on one of our servers, only to have the browser open a window on my desktop machine instead. Yes, I wanted the browser to display on my desktop, but not to actually run there.
So, after a heap of mucking about and fruitless web searching I eventually got fruitful and found the information I needed. Apparently this is a long-standing feature: Firefox on a remote machine will hand off to a process already running on your local box if it is available. This will nicely help to prevent overloading on servers (and is probably usually an appropriate thing to do) but runs counter to my intuition and, if my searching the web is anything to go by, to that of a good many others out there.
It must be said, however, that the majority of users out there will never notice this behaviour, or even begin to give a damn about it.
The way around this, incidentally, is to launch Firefox with the '-no-remote' option. Easy, huh?
[2008-08-24 Edit: s/--no-remote/-no-remote/]
2 comments:
I think you meant "-no-remote" right?
I've never seen 2 dashes used in a row before a command.
Yup, you're right -- I'm still in GNU-land with long command line options, rather than Firefox-land. I'll correct the post. Thanks for that.
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