[rcj_]

I'm probably misunderstanding you, but that is exactly what I'm doing. I have an emacs-server running on a remote server to which I connect via SSH to a tmux session and from there start an emacsclient gui via SSH X forwarding (you might have to set DISPLAY). Works like a charm.

[e12e]

I think parent was saying that you can't run a single daemon on machine emacs-host and launch clients from needs-editing-a-conf-server1...n (possibly with x11 only running on different host workstation1)?

You seem to be running n daemons on needs-editing-a-conf-server1..n and launching n clients on each of these, and "just" transporting the display(s) back to your workstation via x11 forwarding over ssh.

Henche - either run "redundant" daemons or suffer long-ish startup times.

How much resources does your typical long-running daemon consume?

[dgtized]

How about this approach? http://blog.habnab.it/blog/2013/06/25/emacsclient-and-tramp/

He's using tramp to copy an auth key to the remote system, but then using that to allow the remote emacsclient to talk back to the host. Has some caveats, but it's essentially the single daemon, many remote clients approach?