How to Make Your X2Go Session Follow You Anywhere

Author: Stan Switaj

If you use x2goserver and x2goclient, here's a trick that makes your whole development flow portable.

Connect to yourself first

Install both x2goserver and x2goclient on the same machine -- your laptop, for example. Then open x2goclient right there on the laptop and connect it to its own loopback address, 127.0.0.1.

That first connection spins up a real X2Go session on the laptop -- your terminals, your editor, your usual development flow -- running inside a session X2Go can suspend and resume, not just a normal local desktop session.

Why bother, if you're already sitting there?

Because that session doesn't go away when you close the X2Go window. It suspends. And X2Go sessions are tied to the server, not to the client that opened them.

So later, from a completely different machine -- another laptop, a different location, anywhere -- you point x2goclient at your laptop's address instead of 127.0.0.1, log in, and reconnect to that exact same suspended session.

Every terminal tab, every open file, everything running -- exactly where you left it.

One SSH detail worth knowing

X2Go tunnels over SSH, so the laptop's sshd_config needs to actually allow that first loopback connection. If you've already locked things down with an AllowUsers allowlist scoped to specific remote addresses, don't forget the local one too:

AllowUsers yourusername@127.0.0.1

It's an easy line to miss -- SSH from the outside might already work fine, and you won't notice the loopback case is blocked until you try to x2goclient into yourself and it silently fails to authenticate.

The result

One laptop, one persistent X2Go session, reachable from anywhere. Your development flow stops being tied to a physical machine you have to carry around -- you just reconnect to the one you already had.