[slurm-users] X11 forwarding and VNC?

[Loris Bennett]

Hi Chris,

Christopher Benjamin Coffey <Chris.Coffey at nau.edu> writes:

> Loris,
>
> Glad you've made some progress.
>
> We finally got it working as well, and have two findings:
>
> 1. the login node fqdn must be the same as the compute nodes

This is the case on our system.

> 2. --x11 is not required to be added to srun and actually causes it to fail for some reason for us. Very odd, anyone have thoughts?
> - Note without --x11, x11 apps fire up perfectly with srun assuming client is forwarding X11 packets

I couldn't get this to work.  If I don't specify --x11, then I get the
following if I try to start an X application:

  $ xeyes
  Error: Can't open display: :35

But this is sort of what I would expect.

> 3. salloc works fine too without --x11, subsequent srun with a x11 app works great

Doing 'salloc' followed by 'ssh -X'  works for us too, which is surprising to me.

This last option currently seems to me to be the best option for users,
being slightly less confusing than logging into the login node again
from the login node, which is our current workaround.

Still, it's all a bit odd.

Cheers,

Loris

-- 
Dr. Loris Bennett (Mr.)
ZEDAT, Freie Universität Berlin         Email loris.bennett at fu-berlin.de