NX start guide#

KU Leuven NoMachine is a remote desktop application which can be used in connection with the Tier-2 login infrastructure at KU Leuven.

Installing NX NoMachine client#

Download the enterprise version of the client from the NX Client download page.

Steps before configuring NoMachine#

For NoMachine connections to the (KU Leuven) HPC infrastructure, you need to use an SSH agent such as Pageant for Windows users and the default :ref:`agent included with OpenSSH <SSH agent> for Linux/MacOS users.

Once your SSH agent is up and running, you need to issue an SSH certificate to be stored in your agent. For that, please refer to the instructions given in using SSH clients with SSH agent.

NoMachine NX Client Configuration#

  1. Start the NoMachine client and press ‘Continue’ until you see the screen listing your connections, titled ‘Machines’

  2. Press ‘Add’ to create a new connection

  3. In the ‘Addres’ pane

    1. choose a name for the connection, e.g. ‘Genius’

    2. change the Protocol to ‘SSH’

    3. choose the hostname nx.hpc.kuleuven.be for Genius and port 22

      Note

      This NX login host cannot be used to access the cluster from the terminal, directly.

  4. In the ‘Configuration’ pane

    • choose ‘Use key-based authentication with a SSH agent’

    • press ‘Modify’ and select ‘Forward authentication’

  5. Press ‘Connect’

  6. If this is your first login via NX, you will need to enter your VSC username

  7. Your SSH certificate will be automatically fetched from your SSH agent

  8. If you are creating for the first time choose ‘Create a new virtual desktop’. Otherwise please refer to the section on how to reconnect to an NX session for instructions

  9. Read the useful information regarding your session displayed on several screens. This step is very important in case of mobile devices – once you miss the instructions it is not so easy to figure out how to operate NoMachine on your device. You can optionally choose not to show these messages again

Once connected you will see the virtual Linux desktop.

Reconnecting to an NX session#

When you leave a session without logging out, you can reconnect to that session. This is of course a great feature if your network connection is not very stable. It also helps you to work more efficiently since you can simply resume your work where you left off.

When reconnecting choose your desktop from all the listed ones. If there are too many you can use the option ‘find a user or a desktop’ and type your username (vsc-account). Once you found your desktop press ‘connect’.

Note that when you don’t want your session to persist, you should select ‘Log out’ from the ‘System’ menu.

How to start using NX on Genius?#

  1. Once your desktop is open, you can use all available GUI designed software that is listed within the Applications menu. Software is divided into several groups:

    • Accessories (e.g. Calculator, Character Map, Emacs, Gedit, GVim)

    • Graphics (e.g. gThumb Image Viewer, Xpdf PDF Viewer)

    • Internet (e.g. Firefox with pdf support, Filezilla)

    • ‘HPC’ (modules related to HPC use: ‘Computation’ sub-menu with MATLAB and SAS, ‘Visualisation’ sub-menu with ParaView, VisIt, VMD and XCrySDen)

    • Programming (e.g. Meld Diff Viewer, Microsoft Visual Studio Code),

    • System tools (e.g. File Browser, Terminal)

  2. Running the applications in the text mode requires having a terminal open. To launch the terminal please go to Applications -> System tools -> Terminal. From Terminal all the commands available on regular login node can be used

  3. Some more information can be found on slides from our lunchbox session. In the slides you can find the information how to ‘connect the local HDD’ to the NX session for easier transfer of data between the cluster and your local computer

Attached documents#