[GRASS-user] Running Grass Remotely

I would like to run grass remotely on a server running ubuntu. I
would like to be able to forward the X11 to my desktop running ubuntu
9.10 over the network. Any help or pointers to reading material would
be greatly appreciated.
thanks,

--
Stephen Sefick

Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are
so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and
make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the
annoying little problems of being mammals.

                -K. Mullis

If you would like to grab the session on your monitor display, there
is the x11vnc package which will get that session.

Alternatively to getting the session active on the monitor, is using
virtual sessions. I have used vnc4sever, but with the newer versions
of KDE and desktop, it had a lot of artifacts and hard to read the
display. I moved over to NX Machine, http://www.nomachine.com/.
There is also an open source equivalent FreeNX
(http://freenx.berlios.de/) in Ubuntu repositories. The one by
nomachine allows max of two connections I believe, where the freeNX
does not have that limitation.

hope that helps.

Mark

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:16 AM, stephen sefick <ssefick@gmail.com> wrote:

I would like to run grass remotely on a server running ubuntu. I
would like to be able to forward the X11 to my desktop running ubuntu
9.10 over the network. Any help or pointers to reading material would
be greatly appreciated.
thanks,

--
Stephen Sefick

Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are
so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and
make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the
annoying little problems of being mammals.

                                                           \-K\. Mullis

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grass-user@lists.osgeo.org
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-user

Stephen,

you can easily tunnel X11 over ssh, just add -X. I am doing that
routinely (note the capital X).

ssh -X myserver

Then run GRASS as usual on the remote machine and all monitors,
windows will come over locally.

When using VNC, I prefer to install
http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/
which is WAY faster than common VNC. My startscript for the server contains:

xhost +localhost
x11vnc -sloppy_keys -shared -remap DEAD -forever -loop2000 -bg -auth
/var/run/xauth/A* -ncache 10 -display :0
xhost -localhost

Then I use the related VNC client provided by Karl Runge on the client
server. Works great even over very slow connections.

Hope this helps,
Markus

Thanks much for all of the help- It is up and running swimmingly.

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Markus Neteler <neteler@osgeo.org> wrote:

Stephen,

you can easily tunnel X11 over ssh, just add -X. I am doing that
routinely (note the capital X).

ssh -X myserver

Then run GRASS as usual on the remote machine and all monitors,
windows will come over locally.

When using VNC, I prefer to install
http://www.karlrunge.com/x11vnc/
which is WAY faster than common VNC. My startscript for the server contains:

xhost +localhost
x11vnc -sloppy_keys -shared -remap DEAD -forever -loop2000 -bg -auth
/var/run/xauth/A* -ncache 10 -display :0
xhost -localhost

Then I use the related VNC client provided by Karl Runge on the client
server. Works great even over very slow connections.

Hope this helps,
Markus

--
Stephen Sefick

Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are
so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and
make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the
annoying little problems of being mammals.

                -K. Mullis

stephen sefick wrote:

I would like to run grass remotely on a server running ubuntu. I
would like to be able to forward the X11 to my desktop running ubuntu
9.10 over the network. Any help or pointers to reading material would
be greatly appreciated.

Connecting to the server with "ssh -Y ..." should forward X11
connections back to the desktop system automatically (so long as this
hasn't been disabled in the server's sshd configuration). This is
generally simpler than configuring the desktop system to allow remote
X clients to connect directly.

The server still needs all of the libraries which would be required to
run GRASS on a desktop system, e.g. X libraries, Tcl/Tk or wxPython
for the GUI, GDAL and PROJ for GRASS itself, etc.

--
Glynn Clements <glynn@gclements.plus.com>

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 11:56 PM, Glynn Clements
<glynn@gclements.plus.com> wrote:

stephen sefick wrote:

I would like to run grass remotely on a server running ubuntu. I
would like to be able to forward the X11 to my desktop running ubuntu
9.10 over the network. Any help or pointers to reading material would
be greatly appreciated.

Connecting to the server with "ssh -Y ..." should forward X11
connections back to the desktop system automatically (so long as this
hasn't been disabled in the server's sshd configuration). This is
generally simpler than configuring the desktop system to allow remote
X clients to connect directly.

Ah nice, forgot about that.

Related question: I have to login into my office machine via an ssh gateway
where no home directories exist:

ssh -Y isen.xx.zz
...
Could not chdir to home directory /home/neteler: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/X11/xauth: error in locking authority file /home/neteler/.Xauthority

neteler@isen:/$ ssh -Y geodata
Could not create directory '/home/neteler/.ssh'.
The authenticity of host 'geodata (10.0.101.47)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 0c:d2:b4:2c:09:17:63:8c:74:b2:08:ba:d3:77:f6:b4.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts
(/home/neteler/.ssh/known_hosts).
neteler@geodata's password:
Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.
Last login: Tue Jan 12 00:15:24 2010 from 194.xx.yy.zz

[neteler@geodata ~]$ xterm
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication.
xterm Xt error: Can't open display: localhost:10.0
[neteler@geodata ~]$

Does the authentication fail due to the absence of the home directory?
Fake authentication does not suffice? If not I'll try to convince our admin
to give me a home directory on the gateway machine.

Markus

Markus wrote:

you can easily tunnel X11 over ssh, just add -X. I am doing
that routinely (note the capital X).

ssh -X myserver

Then run GRASS as usual on the remote machine and all
monitors, windows will come over locally.

& if you get sick of typing that, or username@ part if different
(or like me if you just forget to do that a lot) you can create a
~/.ssh/config file containing something like this:

Host put_remote_server_name_here
   ForwardX11 yes
   User put_remote_user_name_here

Hamish