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VPS uses HE process (running Firefox) [message #36412]

Wed, 17 June 2009 08:31

starfry
Messages: 24
Registered: March 2009
Location: Coulsdon, Surrey, UK

Junior Member

Hi I have a VPS in which I want to run Firefox so I can access the internet in a protected environment. It works fine, however...

If I have Firefox running on the HE then running it on the VPS just launches another instance on the HE.

It's easy for me to see when it happens because the HE browser and the VPS one have different home pages set so look very different on start-up.

I think it's probably because there is already a firefox process running on the HE and OpenVZ does not ignore it (as it should, it does not belong to the VPS).

I would expect a process request on a VPS to be honoured within the VPS regardless of what may or may not be running on the HE. I would not expect a VPS process request to utilize existing processes on the HE.

This seems to be a potentially dangerous thing: one could have a process running in a VPS that could potentially take over processes on the HE. This seems to me like a big risk.

Am I missing something, or doing something wrong?

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Re: VPS uses HE process (running Firefox) [message #36413 is a reply to message #36412]

Wed, 17 June 2009 08:44

kir
Messages: 1645
Registered: August 2005
Location: Moscow, Russia

Senior Member

starfry wrote on Wed, 17 June 2009 12:31

Am I missing something, or doing something wrong?

There is a built-in logic in firefox -- it queries (via X shared memory or something else -- I'm not an expert here) if firefox is already running, and if yes it just tells the already running instance to open another window. This is possible because you use one X server for both hardware node and container, so this is not a problem or a security hole in OpenVZ.

Try firefox -no-remote. Or use a separate X session for container, say, run Xvnc inside a container and connect to it using vncviewer.

Kir Kolyshkin