SSH Tunneliung of X11 Apps

I had occasion to finally test something I've been wondering for a while: What is the minimal configuration to allow and X11 application to tunnel through SSH? First, this procedure assumes you have a workstation that can display X11 applications. This can either be a Linux desktop or a Windows machine running Xming or another lesser X client.

Second, install a system with only the core or base packages, possibly by building the system through kickstart. Third, edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config and make sure X11Forwarding is set to yes. Reload if needed.

Next install a simple graphical application; for my test I used xclock:

yum install -y xorg-x11-apps

Attempt to run:

ssh 192.168.1.1 -X xclock
Error: Can't open display

In this case a failure is what we expect.

Conventional wisdom says we need to install the entire "X11 Window System" group, which will grab almost 100 packages. Instead install one RPM:

yum install -y xorg-x11-xauth
ssh 192.168.1.1 -X xclock
Warning: <snip> (repeated several times)

...but behold! A glorious xclock. The errors are from not loading fonts on the remote machine. Oddly, if we install xterm, it also complains, yet it works just fine.

A side note on this procedure: To prevent from issuing the -X (or -Y) with the SSH command line, change /etc/ssh/ssh_config, adding:

ForwardX11 yes

Adding gedit will require 57 more packages.
Adding kedit will require 68 more packages.
Best choice: gvim, requiring three packages.

yum install -y xorg-x11-fonts-Type1 xorg-x11-fonts-misc
yum install -y gvim