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shapr
Asked: 2010-09-11 11:23:29 +0800 CST

How can I forward sound as well as X windows with ssh -X?

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I use ssh lots, often doing long-running builds on other machines.

I'd like to know when a compile or other long-running process fails on a remote machine, and my preference for feedback would be audio.

Is there a way I can get remote audio forwarded to my local machine? I'd prefer something that integrates with ssh -X if possible, but I'd like to know about any options that exist.

ssh

2 Answers

  1. The system bell works through ssh; or you can tunnel ESD, NAS, or whatever audio system works for your system. On my systems I have a tiny program called beep installed that rings the system bell.

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  2. Best Answer

    There are multiple sound servers that can forward sound over TCP: esd, JACK, NAS, Pulseaudio... If you decide to use one, your main problem will be to make sure that you have the same on all machines, or else to arrange for forwarding multiple systems and translating them locally.

    For your use case, I think it would be simpler to send only text through the ssh channel, and locally play a sound when you receive a notification from the remote end. For example (nc is OpenBSD netcat):

    while true; do
  ret=$(nc -l localhost 12345);
  if [ "$ret" -eq 0 ]; then play ok.wav; else play failed.wav; fi
done &
ssh remote -R12345:localhost:12345 'make; echo $? | nc localhost 12345'
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