Forwarding emacs server TCP connection works, but cannot create local frame

Question

I'm trying to connect to a remote Emacs server. I created the server with server-use-tcp set to t so a connection file was created. I inspected the connection file and found out that it contains the IP and address socket port, the PID and an auth token

127.0.0.1:41507 6843   
<SECRET>

and then I

1. copied (via scp) the connection file to my local pc
2. forwarded the server port vie ssh -L ssh -L 41507:127.0.0.1:41507 remote

and now when I do

emacsclient  -f ~/.emacs.d/server/server test-buffer

The buffer is really opened in the remote server process.

However, I cannot find a way to make emacsclient create a frame. If I use -c I get

Waiting for Emacs...
*ERROR*: Display :0 can't be opened

and with -t it just hangs, does not even print Waiting for Emacs.

I know similar questions have been asked, but I'm trying to do this without TRAMP, because I'm mostly interested in the fast access time and processing resources on the remote server.

Answer 1

You cannot useemacsclient this way. The Emacs Server does not create frames on the client side; it always creates them on the server-side X11 display or TTY, but the remote server doesn't have access to your local client side TTYs or X11 displays.

The TCP connection of Emacs server is not intended for remote access, it's just a work around for the lack of local sockets in some operating systems (i.e. Windows).