Interactive GUI Sessions on Coeus

X11 Forwarding

GUI is short for Graphical User Interface, meaning any software that is not a command line interface uses a GUI.

To use a GUI on Coeus, like booting RStudio with it's GUI, there is several things to do to enable it.

1. Depending on the operating system, the first step is different.

   • If the OS is Linux, the machine is good to go.

   • If the OS is MacOS, install XQuartz.

   • If the OS is Windows, install MobaXTerm (highly recommended) or Xming.

2. Next, connect to Coeus with X11 Forwarding enabled.

   • For Linux, use ssh -X <odin username>@login1.coeus.rc.pdx.edu

   • For MacOS, turn on XQuartz and use ssh -X <odin username>@login1.coeus.rc.pdx.edu

   • For Windows, turn on Xming and/or MobaXTerm and then sign in through PuTTY.

3. Test that X11 Forwarding is working by typing xclock. A clock GUI should pop up. Any warnings about missing charsets can be ignored.

4. Now that X11 Forwarding is working, now the nodes on Coeus need to be allocated. Do not run the GUI program on the login nodes, those are to be shared.

5. Use salloc to allocate the interactive partition for some time. The below will allocate one hour of an interactive node.

   • salloc --time=1:00:00 --nodes=1

6. Use squeue -u <your odin username> to view which node is allocated.

7. Tunnel into that node with X11 Forwarding enabled, such as ssh -X compute128.

8. Load whatever modules needed to boot a GUI program, and then load the program. After the elapsed time, you will be kicked off.