GUI Programs

HiPerGator 2.0 documentation

Upstream Xpra Documentation

• Xpra Homepage: https://xpra.org/
• Xpra Basic Usage: https://xpra.org/trac/wiki/Usage
• Xpra Advanced Usage: http://xpra.org/manual.html

Step 1: Client Installation

Xpra client installation depends on what operating system is running on your local machine.

Linux

The recommended option is to use the distribution specific packages if possible:

Ubuntu/Debian

sudo apt-get install xpra

CentOS/RHEL

sudo su -
rpm --import https://winswitch.org/gpg.asc
cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
curl -O https://winswitch.org/downloads/CentOS/winswitch.repo
yum install xpra

Windows

XP and Newer

Download and install MS Windows files: from https://xpra.org/, Installer file can be found at https://xpra.org/dists/windows/Xpra_Setup.exe. Note that installation will require an account with Admin privileges.

MAC OS

OS X 10.5 and Newer

Download and install MAC installer files: from https://xpra.org/, Installer file can be found at https://xpra.org/dists/osx/x86/Xpra.dmg. Note that installation will require an account with Admin privileges.

Step 2: Starting your application on HiPerGator

The simplest way to start a GUI application session on HiPerGator is to use the wrapper scripts in a job script. For example, a SLURM job script can have the following commands below the '#SBATCH' section to start the emacs editor GUI under Xpra inside the job:

module load gui
xpra_start emacs

There are other wrapper scripts. For example,

xpra_list_sessions

will refresh the Xpra session list and provide a convenient list of live Xpra sessions as well as commands that can be copied and pasted into a terminal on the client machine.

Some applications, like matlab and rstudio need more care to be started under Xpra. For them, we have additional wrappers like xpra_start_matlab or xpra_start_rstudio.

See the respective application pages for details and sample job scripts e.g. Matlab.

Step 3: Connect to Xpra Session from the client side

Linux:

Xpra is typically automatically added to your path during installation, so you can connect to your running xpra instance using the following syntax where $USERNAME is your UF GatorLink user-name, $SERVERNAME is the server where your application is running inside xpra, and $PORT is the X11 port you assigned when you started your application.

xpra attach ssh:$USERNAME@$SERVERNAME:$PORT

As an example:

testuser@jr-physics:~$ xpra attach ssh:testuser@i21a-s3.rc.ufl.edu:143 --desktop-scaling=on --dpi=96

MatLab running via Xpra under slurm

MAC OS:

Navigate to the folder that contains the xpra executable:

cd /Applications/Xpra.app/Contents/MacOS

Second, connect to your running xpra instance using the following syntax where $USERNAME is your GatorLink user-name, $SERVERNAME is the server where your application is running inside xpra, and $PORT is the X11 port you assigned when you started your application.

./Xpra attach ssh:$USERNAME@$SERVERNAME:$PORT

Example:

./Xpra attach ssh:test-user@i21a-s3.rc.ufl.edu:143 --desktop-scaling=on --dpi=96

Microsoft Windows

First, navigate to the install location of xpra (normally C:\Program Files (x86)\Xpra\).

In MobaXterm

cd /drives/c/Progam\ Files\ \(x86\)/Xpra/

Second, connect to your running xpra instance using the following syntax where $USERNAME is your GatorLink user-name, $SERVERNAME is the server where your application is running inside xpra, and $PORT is the X11 port you assigned when you started your application.

./xpra attach ssh:$USERNAME@$SERVERNAME:$PORT

Example

 ./xpra attach ssh:testuser@i21a-s3.rc.ufl.edu:143 --desktop-scaling=on --dpi=96

MatLab running via Xpra under slurm

NOTE

If you close the window using the close button, this will exit your application just like a native application. If you want to simply detach the session and come back later, please follow the detaching xpra session instructions below

Step 4: Detaching Xpra Session

These instructions allow you to detach a running xpra client without closing the application.

Linux and MAC OS

In the original terminal where you activated the client, simply press Control-C to detach the session.

2016-04-06 15:18:17,173 Attached to ssh:testuser@i21a-s3.rc.ufl.edu:143 (press Control-C to detach)
^C
got signal SIGINT, exiting
2016-04-06 15:18:42,513 Connection lost

You can re-attach to the running application using the xpra attach command as described in the instructions above.

Windows

• Start a new console and navigate to the xpra directory as shown above.
• Run the following command where $USERNAME is your UF GatorLink user-name, $SERVERNAME is the server where your application is running inside xpra, and $PORT is the X11 port you assigned when you started your application.

./xpra detach ssh:$USERNAME@$SERVERNAME:$PORT

Example

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Xpra"
./xpra detach ssh:testuser@i21a-s3.rc.ufl.edu:143

Note

If you are using mobaXterm, you can press Control-C in the mobaXterm window to detach, just like using the Linux client.