Using the Xming X server to display graphical programs#

To display graphical applications from a Linux computer (such as the VSC clusters) on your Windows desktop, you need to install an X Window server. Here we describe the installation of Xming, one such server and freely available.

Installing Xming#

  1. Download the Xming installer from the Xming website.

  2. Either install Xming from the Public Domain Releases (free) or from the Website Releases (after a donation) on the website.

  3. Run the Xming setup program on your Windows desktop. Make sure to select ‘XLaunch wizard’ and ‘Normal PuTTY Link SSH client’.

../_images/xming_installation.png

Running Xming:#

  1. To run Xming, select XLaunch from the Start Menu.

  2. Select ‘Multiple Windows’. This will open each application in a separate window.

    ../_images/xming_display_settings.png

  3. Select ‘Start no client’ to make XLaunch wait for other programs (such as PuTTY).

    ../_images/xming_session_type.png

  4. Select ‘Clipboard’ to share the clipboard.

    ../_images/xming_clipboard.png

  5. Finally save the configuration.

    ../_images/xming_save.png

  6. Now Xming is running … and you can launch a graphical application in your PuTTY terminal. Do not forget to enable X11 forwarding as explained on our PuTTY page. To test the connection, you can try to start a simple X program on the login nodes, e.g., xterm or xeyes. The latter will open a new window with a pair of eyes. The pupils of these eyes should follow your mouse pointer around. Close the program by typing \”ctrl+c": the window should disappear. If you get the error ‘DISPLAY is not set’, you did not correctly enable the X-Forwarding.