GUI software

You can run GUI software on CCV systems using two different methods:

X Forwarding

If you have an installation of X11 on your local system, you can access Oscar with X forwarding enabled, so that the windows, menus, cursor, etc. of any X applications running on Oscar are all forwarded to your local X11 server. Here are some resources for setting up X11:

Mac OS X - http://developer.apple.com/opensource/tools/x11.html
Windows - http://software.brown.edu/dist/w-exceed2007.html

Once your X11 server is running locally, open a terminal and use

ssh -Y username@ssh.ccv.brown.edu

to establish the X forwarding connection. Then, you can launch GUI applications from the Oscar login node and they will be displayed locally on your X11 server.

Note: the login nodes are shared resources and are provided for debugging, programming, and magaing files. Please do not use them for production runs (for example, executing a long-running script in a GUI instance of Matlab). You can use the batch system to submit production runs if your application can be run without a GUI (for example, with matlab -nodisplay).

One limitation of X forwarding is its sensitivity to your network connection's latency. We advise against using X forwarding from a connection outside of the Brown campus network, since you will likely experience lag between your actions and their response in the GUI.

Virtual Network Computing (VNC)

CCV offers a VNC service that allows you to access a complete Linux graphical desktop environment. The VNC protocol will perform better than X forwarding when connecting from off-campus locations.