1waypipe(1) General Commands Manual waypipe(1)
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6 waypipe - A transparent proxy for Wayland applications
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9 waypipe [options...] client
10 waypipe [options...] server -- command...
11 waypipe [options...] recon control_pipe new_socket_path
12 waypipe [options...] ssh ...
13 waypipe [options...] bench bandwidth
14
16 waypipe is a proxy for Wayland clients, with the aim of supporting be‐
17 havior like ssh -X.
18 When run as waypipe client, it will open a socket (by default at
20 /tmp/waypipe-client.sock) and will connect to the local Wayland compos‐
21 itor and forward all Wayland applications which were linked to it over
22 the socket by a matching waypipe server instance.
23 When run as waypipe server, it will run the command that follows in its
25 command line invocation, set up its own Wayland compositor socket, and
26 try to connect to its matching waypipe client socket (by default
27 /tmp/waypipe-server.sock) and try to forward all the Wayland clients
28 that connect to fake compositor socket to the matching waypipe client.
29 The waypipe recon mode is used to reconnect a waypipe server instance
31 which has had a control pipe (option --control) set. The new socket
32 path should indicate a Unix socket whose connections are forwarded to
33 the waypipe client that the waypipe server was initially connected to.
34 Next, prefixing an ssh ... command to become waypipe ssh ... will auto‐
36 matically set up local and remote copies of waypipe, as well as for‐
37 warding between their sockets, so that Wayland applications run re‐
38 motely will be displayed locally.
39 Finally, the waypipe bench mode can be used to estimate, given a spe‐
41 cific connection bandwidth in MB/sec, which compression options produce
42 the lowest latency. It tests two synthetic images, one made to be
43 roughly as compressible as images containing text, and one made to be
44 roughly as compressible as images containing pictures.
45
47 -c C, --compress C
48 Select the compression method applied to data transfers. Options
49 are none (for high-bandwidth networks), lz4 (intermediate), zstd
50 (slow connection). The default compression is none. The compression
51 level can be chosen by appending = followed by a number. For exam‐
52 ple, if C is zstd=7, waypipe will use level 7 Zstd compression.
53 -d, --debug
55 Print debug log messages.
56 -h, --help
58 Show help message and quit.
59 -n, --no-gpu
61 Block protocols like wayland-drm and linux-dmabuf which require ac‐
62 cess to e.g. render nodes.
63 -o, --oneshot
65 Only permit a single connection, and exit when it is closed.
66 -s S, --socket S
68 Use S as the path for the Unix socket. The default socket path for
69 server mode is /tmp/waypipe-server.sock; for client mode, it is
70 /tmp/waypipe-client.sock; and in ssh mode, S gives the prefix used
71 by both the client and the server for their socket paths.
72 -v, --version
74 Print the version number and quit.
75 --allow-tiled
77 By default, waypipe filters out all advertised DMABUF formats which
78 have format layout modifiers, as CPU access to these formats may be
79 very slow. Setting this flag disables the filtering. Since tiled
80 images often permit faster GPU operations, most OpenGL applications
81 will select tiling modifiers when they are available.
82 --control C
84 For server or ssh mode, provide the path to the "control pipe" that
85 will be created the the server. Writing (with waypipe recon C T, or
86 instance replace all running connections with connections to the
87 new Unix socket. The new socket should ultimately forward data to
88 the same waypipe client that the server was connected to before.
89 --display D
91 For server or ssh mode, provide WAYLAND_DISPLAY and let waypipe
92 configure its Wayland display socket to have a matching path. (If D
93 is not an absolute path, the socket will be created in the folder
94 given by the environment variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR.)
95 --drm-node R
97 Specify the path R to the drm device that this instance of waypipe
98 should use and (in server mode) notify connecting applications
99 about.
100 --remote-node R
102 In ssh mode, specify the path R to the drm device that the remote
103 instance of waypipe (running in server mode) should use.
104 --remote-bin R
106 In ssh mode, specify the path R to the waypipe binary on the remote
107 computer, or its name if it is available in PATH. It defaults to
108 waypipe if this option isn’t passed.
109 --login-shell
111 Only for server mode; if no command is being run, open a login
112 shell.
113 --threads T
115 Set the number of total threads (including the main thread) which a
116 waypipe instance will create. These threads will be used to paral‐
117 lelize compression operations. This flag is passed on to waypipe
118 server when given to waypipe ssh. The flag also controls the thread
119 count for waypipe bench.
120 --unlink-socket
122 Only for server mode; on shutdown, unlink the Unix socket that
123 waypipe connects to.
124 --video
126 Compress specific DMABUF formats using a lossy video codec. Opaque,
127 10-bit, and multiplanar formats, among others, are not supported.
128 --hwvideo
130 Sets the --video option, and also specifies that hardware video en‐
131 coding and decoding should be used if possible. Whether this option
132 improves bandwidth use and latency is hardware dependent.
133
135 The following waypipe ssh subcommand will attempt to run weston-flower
136 on the server exserv, displaying the result on the local system.
137 waypipe ssh user@exserv weston-flower
139 One can obtain similar behavior by explicitly running waypipe and ssh:
141 waypipe --socket /tmp/socket-client client &
143 ssh -R /tmp/socket-server:/tmp/socket-client user@exserv \
144 waypipe --socket /tmp/socket-server server -- weston-flower
145 kill %1
146 Waypipe may be run locally without an ssh connection by specifying
148 matching socket paths. For example:
149 waypipe --socket /tmp/waypipe.sock client &
151 waypipe --socket /tmp/waypipe.sock server weston-simple-dmabuf-egl
152 kill %1
153 rm /tmp/waypipe.sock
154 Many applications require specific environment variables to use Wayland
156 instead of X11. If ssh isn't configured to support loading ~/.ssh/envi‐
157 ronment, one can use env to set the needed variables each time; or run
158 waypipe without a command, to use the login shell environment.
159 waypipe ssh user@host env XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland dolphin
161 Waypipe has support for reconnecting a waypipe client and a waypipe
163 server instance when whatever was used to transfer data between their
164 sockets fails. For this to work, waypipe must still be running on both
165 sides of the connection. As the waypipe ssh wrapper will automatically
166 close both the waypipe client and the waypipe server when the connec‐
167 tion fails, the client and server modes must be run seprately. For ex‐
168 ample, to persistently forward applications running on server rserv to
169 a local Wayland compositor running on lserv, one would first set up a
170 waypipe client instance on lserv,
171 waypipe -s /tmp/waypipe.sock client &
173 and on server rserv, establish socket forwarding and run the server
175 ssh -fN -L /tmp/waypipe-lserv.sock:/tmp/waypipe.sock user@lserv
177 waypipe -s /tmp/waypipe-lserv.sock --control /tmp/ctrl-lserv.pipe \
178 --display wayland-lserv server -- sleep inf &
179 then set WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-lserv and run the desired applica‐
181 tions. When the ssh forwarding breaks, on rserv, reconnect with
182 ssh -fN -L /tmp/waypipe-lserv-2.sock:/tmp/waypipe.sock user@lserv
184 waypipe recon /tmp/ctrl-lserv.pipe /tmp/waypipe-lserv-2.sock
185
187 When running as a server, by default WAYLAND_DISPLAY will be set for
188 the invoked process.
189 If the --oneshot flag is set, waypipe will instead set WAYLAND_SOCKET
191 and inherit an already connected socketpair file descriptor to the in‐
192 voked (child) process. Some programs open and close a Wayland connec‐
193 tion repeatedly as part of their initialization, and will not work cor‐
194 rectly with this flag.
195
197 waypipe ssh will exit with the exit status code from the remote com‐
198 mand, or with return code 1 if there has been an error.
199
201 weston(1), ssh(1)
202 2021-01-27 waypipe(1)