How to fix "X11 forwarding request failed on channel 0"

Last updated on September 14, 2020 by Dan Nanni

First of all, we assume that you already enabled X11 forwarding over SSH properly.

If you are getting "X11 forwarding request failed on channel 0" message upon SSH login, there could be several reasons. Solutions vary as well, as desribed below.

Solution One

For security reason, OpenSSH server, by default, binds X11 forwarding server to the local loopback address, and sets the hostname in DISPLAY environment variable to localhost. Under this setup, some X11 clients cannot handle X11 forwarding properly, which causes the reported error. To fix this problem, add the following line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, which will let X11 forwarding server bind on the wild card address.

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

X11Forwarding yes
X11UseLocalhost no

Restart SSH server to activate the change:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

Or:

$ sudo systemctl restart ssh.service

Or:

$ sudo service sshd restart

Solution Two

The broken X11 forwarding error may also happen if the remote host where SSH server is running has IPv6 disabled. To fix the error in this case, open /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, and uncomment AddressFamily all (if any). Then add the following line. This will force SSH server to use IPv4 only, but not IPv6, so that SSH server complies with the IPv4-only server settings.

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

AddressFamily inet

Again, restart SSH server to finalize the change.

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