X11 Forwarding:

enabling X11 forwarding (change for remote machine)

sshd config “/etc/ssh/ssh/sshd_config”:

X11Forading yes
X11DisplayOffset 10
X11UseLocalhost yes
AllowTcpForwarding yes

After that is enable ssh into your machine with -XY parameters

ssh -XY username@hostname

And you should be able to launch a generic X11 application.

Launch Desktop Environment

So far I have only tested xfce4 with X11 forwarding (I tried i3 but it would not work for a variety of reason unfortunately). Create X11 session: (issue on remote machine) Install xnest via your package manager if you don’t have it installed

Xnest :1 &
export DISPLAY=:1

Those command should make it possible to then just start the xfce4 session. Specifically it should create a black window on your host machine that will contain the xsession from your remote machine

xfce4-session

Note that resizing the window is a bit finky so I recommend you execute the above command once the x11 window is at the desired size

USB bus Hunting

A bit more esoteric but in case you are doing usb passthrough to a vm lsusb (not installed by default on most distros) is critical for determining it. Specifically, the following command prints your buses + devices and the pci lanes for the various busses

lsusb.py -ciu

Example output:

usb5              1d6b:0002 09 1IF  [USB 2.00,   480 Mbps,   0mA] (xhci-hcd 0000:0b:00.3) hub
  5-1               0424:2512 09 1IF  [USB 2.00,   480 Mbps,   2mA] (Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC) USB 2.0 Hub) hub
    5-1.1             0424:2602 09 1IF  [USB 2.00,   480 Mbps,   2mA] (Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC) USB 2.0 Hub) hub
      5-1.1.1           0424:2228 00 1IF  [USB 2.00,   480 Mbps,   2mA] (Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC) 9-in-2 Card Reader 080521109942)
        5-1.1.1:1.0         (IF) 08:06:50 2EPs (Bulk-Only) usb-storage host10 (sdh sdg)
  5-2               046d:c332 00 2IFs [USB 2.00,    12 Mbps, 300mA] (Logitech Gaming Mouse G502 047D38653935)
    5-2:1.0           (IF) 03:01:02 1EP  (Mouse) usbhid hidraw4 (hid-generic) input14 (hid-generic)
    5-2:1.1           (IF) 03:00:00 1EP  (None) usbhid hidraw5 (hid-generic) input15 (hid-generic)
  5-3               16c0:047d 00 4IFs [USB 2.00,    12 Mbps, 100mA] (Soarer Soarer's Keyboard Converter)
    5-3:1.0           (IF) 03:01:01 1EP  (Keyboard) usbhid hidraw0 (hid-generic)
    5-3:1.1           (IF) 03:00:00 1EP  (None) usbhid hidraw1 (hid-generic)
    5-3:1.2           (IF) 03:00:00 1EP  (None) usbhid hidraw2 (hid-generic) input18 (hid-generic)
    5-3:1.3           (IF) 03:00:00 2EPs (None) usbhid hidraw3 (hid-generic)
  5-4               1235:8211 ef 5IFs [USB 2.10,   480 Mbps, 500mA] (Focusrite Scarlett Solo USB Y7EZUJW1CDCC81)
    5-4:1.0           (IF) 01:01:20 0EPs (Audio) snd-usb-audio sound/card1
    5-4:1.1           (IF) 01:02:20 1EP  (Audio) snd-usb-audio
    5-4:1.2           (IF) 01:02:20 1EP  (Audio) snd-usb-audio
    5-4:1.3           (IF) ff:01:20 1EP  (Vendor Specific Class)
    5-4:1.4           (IF) 08:06:50 2EPs (Bulk-Only) usb-storage host11 (sdi)

In conjuction with lspci, it should be quite easy to move around devices in order to more easily pass devices through

Memory Cache Clearing

Although you shouldn’t encounter this issue (probably related to a memory leak) this command is useful for clearing large memory caches. In my case I get sometimes up to 10 gigs cached up for not real apparent reason.

# sync; echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

PDF combing

I find that I often need to combine pdfs locally (prefer not to use online utilities due privacy concerns (receipts, invoices, etc). So a local combiner is quite useful. pdftk is used and then the following sequence ripped from a stackoverflow

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output output.pdf

Resources

pdf combining