I've installed xquartz on my OSX machine, and upon connecting to a remote server with ssh -X [email protected] I'm able to launch gui windows (let's say Rstudio for example --I see the window show up on my screen even though it's running on the remote server -neato!).
What I'd like to do is create stable, persistent sessions to disconnect/reconnect to (i.e. close and re-open the same window with my environment and variables still there, instead of closing it and opening another one).
Hence, I'm using a tmux session from the terminal so that I can detach from my ssh connection to the server and connect back later. What I'd like to do then is re-launch the gui windows that I started from that session previously. Unfortunately, I don't know how to "store" or "detach" from the GUI windows once they are created --if I close them, then the unsaved data is deleted and the session is lost.
Is there a way to launch a persistent window from within ssh -X, and then "hide" that window, and re-open it after connecting again later?
Not sure if this will still help now but I'll put it here for posterity. For the specific RStudio case you'd be better off installing a server version of RStudio - either the paid RStudio Workbench or the free open-source version. The server versions provide the persistent sessions you're looking for, including for long-running jobs.
The open source version has a login, but all passwords are sent in unencrypted - don't expose it to the internet without other protections. In the open-source version you can only have one session per user.
Even without allowing access to the public internet you could forward port 8787 over ssh ( -L 8787:localhost:8787) & log into the remote RStudio Server instance from your local browser by visiting localhost:8787.