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Usually I manage the packages on remote debian servers via SSH using aptitude or apt-get in CLI mode. Aptitude also does have an ugly interactive mode. However, on desktop systems I love the comfort and overall view of GUI tools like Synaptic.

Is it somehow possible to configure a local desktop system to manage an SSH remote server? I could imagine some chroot environment with mounted sshfs FUSE filesystems, however, I have no clue how to setup such an environment to get it work with Synaptic connected to the local display managing apt tools on remote side. There is no xserver running on the remote server.

Any alternative approach is welcome as well.

Pinke Helga
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    This goes against every bit of what we strive for here. What you want is not a GUI, but a configuration management system. – EEAA May 28 '17 at 02:17

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You need a local X server. For Linux and the BSDs, this is done. With Mac, you just need to install it. For Windows... there are free ones with limitations, commercial ones, and Free ones. I'd install cygwin-x if I had to use a Windows machine...

Anyway, start your X server on your local machine, use X over ssh (ssh -X user@remote or ssh -Y user@remote), and once at a prompt launch whatever app. Using sudo will make launching a GUI over a SSH tunnel started by some other user much easier than su but either can be done.

Of course this also means that you'll need the GUI tools installed on the remote machine... Again a personal thing but I'd rather just do it all via command line...

ivanivan
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