How to open xterm for mininet on MacOS

Mar 12, 2022

A quick note on resolving cannot open xterm for mininet.

Step 1. ssh port forward on Virtualbox

Easy way to SSH into VirtualBox machine | Any OS

dev.to

Step 2. Install & Run XQuartz

(As as March 2022, Sound ok on M1 chips Mac.)

Step 3. Use trusted X11 forwarding (-Y)

Using -Y flag (trusted X11 forwarding) instead of -X flag

mac> ssh -Y <HOST>

Step 4. Preserve environment (-E) when sudo mn

mininet@mininet-vm:~$ sudo -E mn --topo minimal

Step 5. xterm should work

mininet> xterm h1 h2