Other Options

Some fine print:
   It is not practical for us to offer individual support for software on students' personal computers. The information below provides useful pointers to tools that you can install on your Windows PC or Macintosh to connect to rivanna complete your classwork. Some of it may be out-of-date.  ITS-managed computers are available at many locations on grounds. These may always be used to access rivanna. While we can offer advice, the staff for PHYS will not be available to install and configure software on students' personal computers.

Note: Don't forget to read the documentation for any programs you wish to install!

The options below may or may not be more convenient for you than the primary access method using On Demand:  https://rivanna-portal.hpc.virginia.edu/pun/sys/dashboard

None of these other options are required, but they might make your life easier and if you have experience with something, feel free to use that.  

The Basics

Text: The most basic piece of software you need is a terminal emulator that can connect to rivanna over the internet using a secure network protocol. This will give you a text-based interface to rivanna (an interactive shell).

Graphics: If you want to display graphics from programs you run on rivanna (and this includes anything that makes use of your mouse), you will need to have a standalone X server running on your local machine or be using NXClient. This software interprets requests from the remote machine to draw windows and react to mouse events on your local machine. This allows you to run (almost) anything on the remote machine, while viewing and controlling the results locally.

For PHYS 1655 much of the work can be accomplished using only a text shell. However, you will probably find editors with graphical interfaces such as emacs or nedit more intuitive. Furthermore, data visualization projects will certainly need graphics support.

Text: Connection options (Secure Shell / Secure Copy Clients)

SSH clients allow you to get a text-based terminal window that talks to rivanna. By installing an SSH client and an X server (see below) you can do both text and graphics. An ssh/X connection to rivanna will typically be slower than an NXClient connection when you are working from home, over a slow network connection. On grounds, the difference in speed is less noticeable.

Windows SSH Options:

Preferred option: PuTTY

  • PuTTY is a free and very easy to use ssh client. You can download putty.exe here.

  • Download the Windows installer program for PuTTY. Using the installer makes it easier to later un-install if you so desire/need.

  • Follow the installation instructions. The default options are fine for ~99% of users.

  • Once installed, start the program and a Configuration Window will appear. By default you start on the Session page of the Configuration Window. Enter rivanna.hpc.virginia.edu for the HOSTNAME in the Session Configuration.

  • If you will be using X-windows, ie, for graphics, as ~100% of you will – see Xming below! – make sure to Enable X11 Forwarding before you connect. To do this look at the menu options on the left hand side of the configuration window. Select Connection→SSH→X11 then select Enable X11 Forwarding.

  • For convenience, you can save these settings in a session profile for all your future connections to rivanna: On the Sessionpage, enter a nickname for this profile (for instance, “connect2rivanna”) in the “Saved Sessions” field; then press “Save”. Upon future launches of the putty program, you will then be able to load this session called “connect2rivanna” and all settings will be set for you automatically.

  • Click Open on the PuTTY Configuration window.

  • You will then be prompted to enter your userID/password to complete the connection. Then press Open to complete your connection. Enter your password when prompted; characters might not appear but proceed to enter it and press return/enter. Note:

Secondary option: SecureCRT

  • If you are on the University network, you can download SecureCRT directly from ITS. This is the ssh client used on the ITS Lab computers. To use SecureCRT, just click on the QuickConnect icon as shown on the above webpage. Enter: rivanna.hpc.virginia.edu for the HOSTNAME and your userID for USERNAME.
    Enter your password when prompted; characters might not appear but proceed to enter it and press return/enter. If you wish to display X-windows, open the configuration for secureCRT and enable X11 tunneling. Then exit and restart secureCRT.

Mac OSX SSH:

  • If you have a Mac w/ OS X, you are all ready to go! Just open a shell (Applications→Utilities→Terminal) and use the sshprogram that is already installed.
    Note: if you wish to display X-windows, you should call ssh as follows:
    ssh -Y user@rivanna.hpc.virginia.edu,
    if you get an error using the -Y flag, this means you are running an older version of ssh. In that case use instead:
    ssh -X user@rivanna.hpc.virginia.edu
    Always use the -Y option if this is supported, otherwise you may experience some problems with your windows unexpectedly closing.

  • Enter your password when prompted; characters might not appear but proceed to enter it and press return/enter.

  • Copying files in Mac OS X is easy too: The scp program is also available for file transfers.

Transferring files to Rivanna

File transfers can be performed using a web browser or via programs supporting the secure copy command.

Graphics: X-Server software packages (X11)

Windows Graphical Interactions

  • Xming is a free and easy to use X-server for Windows. To install Xming, go to the official Download Page and download and install the latest version of the packages called:

    • Xming

    • Xming-fonts

You should be downloading two distinct .exe files, corresponding to the setup executables for the above two packages. Once downloaded, run the Xming setup executable first (clicking through to accept all defaults, including the creation of the desktop shortcuts) and then the Xming-fonts setup executable (again accepting all default options). Once installed, you will be able to start the Xming program via the “XLaunch” shortcut on your desktop. Choose “Multiple windows”, press Next, then “Start no client”, press Next again, then Next again, and then finally Finish. This will set up an XWindows server on your personal Windows computer allowing you to open up graphics produced by a remote machine. Note: you must start the Xming program before you connect with your PuTTY or SecureCRT program.

Last note! You have to have X11 forwarding enabled for this to work. See the PuTTY or SecureCRT instructions above. See Xming for more information on Xming.

Mac Graphical Interactions

First check to see if you already have X11 installed, it would be located in Applications → Utilities → X11.app

If X11.app is not there…

Installing packages from Apple

For OS 10.6x: See the instructions at:
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

If you are running an earlier version of Mac OS X, please notify your instructor.

Usage

  • Start the X server: Applications → Utilities → X11.app

  • Open a terminal: Applications→Utilities→Terminal

  • In your terminal type ssh -Y userID@rivanna.hpc.virginia.edu to connect to rivanna and you should now be able to view X-windows graphics from rivanna.

Problems/Debugging

  • If your X11 application is running, but you still cannot display graphical windows, then use the terminal program that is part of the X11 application (xterm) instead of the standard Mac terminal program for your ssh connection.

  • Try this link http://homepage.mac.com/sao1/X11/index.html

  • If you have a problem with your pointer turning yellow and being difficult to see, try the links here or here.

Cutting and pasting text between the Mac desktop and X-windows

There can be some issues with cutting and pasting between windows managed by X11 and those by the Mac desktop. After starting X11, go to your preferences/settings menu and you'll find several options (“Emulate 3-button mouse” ,etc). Try checking all the options and things should work reasonably well. You may also find it vastly more convenient to simply use a 3-button USB mouse.

Note: If you are running Windows and you have problems with your fonts, download the additional font packages from this link as well

Additional note: If you are running Windows and you cannot see the text in an emacs session (like it all appears as empty boxes) run emacs via

emacs -fn 9x15 filename &

More Advanced Tools

The tools above will work just fine for all of your Phys 2660 work. But you can check out this section if you're interested in exploring some more interesting technology. With the exception of Cygwin and the LiveCD's, these are beyond the scope of our documentation here and are not recommended for beginners.

Cygwin (under Windows)

With Cygwin you can install a linux based environment on your Windows PC, including all necessary communication and X-server software. See the local Cygwin Page for instructions on how you can install Cygwin.

FINK/X11 (for the Mac)

You may install the X-server via Fink, the OS X project that brings most of the open-source Linux tools (graphics programs, office programs, libraries, etc) to your Mac with a convenient installation management tool. The specific link for installing Fink is: here, but that's just the first step. Note: It is not necessary to do this for people running Mac OS X (the tools described above are more than adequate).

Virtual Machines

Virtualization is a very hot subject these days, you'll probably be hearing about it more and more in the near future. Many solutions are already available to allow you to install a second (third,…,etc) operating system under a virtual machine (VM) running on your computer. The VM looks just like a full-fledged computer to the new OS, but the whole VM runs as a regular process on the host computer. For example, you can have a VM running Linux on a Windows host or visa versa. Or you can have a VM running another flavor of Linux(Windows) under a Linux(Windows/Mac) host etc. Why would anyone want to do this? There are many reasons (testing code under many OS's on a single machine, having a convenient development platform for system code, fault tolerance, etc). Though the VM has all the functionality of a fully configured computer, it's just a file that can easily be moved from one physical machine to another with ease and practically no issues of hardware compatibility!

A detailed review of VM tools is beyond the scope of this page. But there are a number of easily installed options that will give you a usable VM with ssh, X-server, etc.

  • VirtualBox is a hot new virtualizer that allows you to install Linux under Windows or on an Intel-based Mac.

  • See this list of recommendations for virtual machine applications.

  • No labels