X via Windows Howto

This howto explains how to run X windows applications on the het.brown.edu servers from remote Windows machines.

• First you need to make sure the following software is installed on the Windows machine.
  • Ssh client (follow the documentation to set up an ssh connection to now.het.brown.edu, and save this as a profile)
• Realvnc free edition stand-alone viewer.
• The Ssh client is all you need to open a terminal window, and do file transfers. Make sure you are familiar with this. Connect to now.het.brown.edu using the profile you saved.
• Then connect from now to the machine you want to actually run programs on. This machine needs to have the vncserver program installed. Most of the Linux machines should have this, and some of the more recent Solaris boxes. Lets say we go to hr-02
• Type
  • vncserver
  on hr-02. It may ask you to enter a password which will be set for all future vnc sessions. It will tell you which display the server is running on, e.g. :1. Remember this.
• Now go back to the Windows Ssh client. Select Edit-> Settings -> Tunneling
• Select Outgoing and click on Add. Select a display name (e.g. hr-02). Enter the values:
  • Listen Port: 5900
  • Destination Host: hr-02.het.brown.edu
  • Destination Port: 5901
  • If the display number was say :3, instead of :1 we would need to change the 5901 to 5903. You get the idea.
• Select File-> Save settings
• Restart the Ssh client and connect to now.
• Start vnc viewer program on the Windows machine and connect to localhost. Enter your vnc session password.
• Everything should now work.
• When you are done, you need to close your applications on hr-02 and shutdown the vncserver. Note this and your apps on hr-02 will keep running indefinitely unless you shut them down, so please use with care. In a terminal window on hr-02 type
  • vncserver -kill :1
  • where :1 is your display number.
•    If you want to run mathematica, or xmaple you need to add two lines to your .Xdefaults file on now.
  • XMathematica*fontList: fixed
  • Maple7*fontList: fixed
• If the remote machine runs linux instead of Windows, most of the above is replaced with the one line command
  • vncviewer -via now.het.brown.edu hr-02.het.brown.edu:1