Some applications on Clipper provide the ability to interact with a graphical user interface using X11 Forwarding. X11 Forwarding allows you to run graphical applications on Clipper’s resources while interacting with them through your own local display and input devices.
Configuring Your Local System
An X server must be installed on the computer which is used to connect to Clipper. Popular options include:
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows versions later than Windows 10 1809 have a built in SSH client capable of X11 Forwarding. Alternatively, PuTTY can be used.
Windows Command Prompt
Start the X server. The DISPLAY environment variable must also be set.
set DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
Connect to Clipper using SSH with X11 Forwarding enabled:
ssh -Y hpcuser1@port.clipper.gvsu.edu
Windows PowerShell
Start the X server. The DISPLAY environment variable must also be set.
$env:DISPLAY="localhost:0.0"
Connect to Clipper using SSH with X11 Forwarding enabled:
ssh -Y hpcuser1@port.clipper.gvsu.edu
PuTTY
Start the X server and configure PuTTY to support X11 Forwarding. From the Connection > SSH > X11 menu, select Enable X11 forwarding and set the X display location to localhost:0.0.
After these settings have been configured, connect to Clipper.
macOS
Start the X server (XQuartz). Connect to Clipper using SSH with X11 Forwarding enabled:
ssh -X hpcuser1@port.clipper.gvsu.edu
Linux
No special configuration is needed to use X11 Forwarding with a graphical Linux client installation. Connect to Clipper using SSH with X11 Forwarding enabled:
ssh -X hpcuser1@port.clipper.gvsu.edu
Launching an Interactive Session with srun
Use the --x11 option to request an X11 Forwarding interactive session with Slurm’s srun command:
srun --x11 --pty /bin/bash
Running a Graphical Application
An example of using the SAS graphical interface is below. We will request an eight hour allocation of a single processor with 8 GB of memory located in the cpu partition.
Request an X11 Forwarding interactive job using srun:
srun --partition=cpu --time=08:00 --ntasks 1 --cpus-per-task 1 --mem=8G --x11 --pty /bin/bash
Load the sas module:
module load sas
Launch sas:
sas
The application will open on your local machine:
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