We provide the software FastX for running remote desktop sessions. You have the choice to use either a desktop client software or to start a session from inside a browser window (which does not achieve the performance of the desktop client though).

 

Please Note:

We only support FastX 3 when connecting to our Rocky 8 cluster.

Desktop client (ssh-based FastX sessions)

Native desktop clients are available for

• Windows
• Windows (non-root)
• Linux (64Bit)
• MacOS X

The vendor documentation describes in detail how to configure and use the desktop client. Choose ssh as the connection method.

You may start ssh-based FastX sessions on any of our login nodes. However, we provide special login nodes, namely

• login18-x-1.hpc.itc.rwth-aachen.de
• login18-x-2.hpc.itc.rwth-aachen.de

which are protected by stricter resource limitations (described here) in order to make it more difficult for a single user to overload them.

Browser based client

Web access to the FastX servers works only from inside the RWTH network (eduroam, VPN, or institute network)!

To use the browser based client follow either of the links:

• https://login18-x-1.hpc.itc.rwth-aachen.de:3300/
• https://login18-x-2.hpc.itc.rwth-aachen.de:3300/

You will then get redirected to a SSL-secured connection on port 3443 where you can login with your usual HPC account:

More information can be found in the vendor documentation.

Currently, the desktop environments MATE and XFCE can be started. KDE as well as GNOME tend to consume many hardware resources and are therefore not available for selection.