X11 Forwarding
You can establish X11 sessions SSH connections. When an X program is run from a secure shell prompt, the SSH client and server create a new secure channel within the current SSH connection, and the X program data is sent over that channel to your client machine as if you were connected to the X server via a local terminal.
As you might imagine, X11 forwarding can be very useful. For example, you can use X11 forwarding to create a secure, interactive session with the up2date GUI on the server to selectively update packages (if you have the necessary Red Hat Network packages installed on the server). To do this, simply connect to the server using ssh and type
up2dateYou will be asked to supply the root password for the server. Then, the Red Hat Update Agent will appear and you can update your packages on the server as though you were sitting in front of the machine.
The processing overhead required to encrypt and decrypt the secure information being sent over the channel, plus the extra bandwidth necessary to send encrypted X application data, may be significant, however. Adequate testing is required to make sure that the X program is still usable, given your particular hardware and bandwidth conditions.
