GUI Programs

Here you will find the information necessary to configure and run graphical user interface (GUI) applications on HiPerGator. The process is not complicated, but running a GUI on a remote server and displaying the windows on your local client computer with a sufficiently responsive interface is not as easy as simply running the application locally. To accomplish this task we use Xpra software - an open-source multi-platform persistent remote display server and client for forwarding application and desktop screens. Full information on Xpra can be found in its basic usage documentation and the Xpra manual. Below we show the parts of Xpra documentation relevant to running GUI Programs on HiPerGator.

Servers in the SLURM gui partition are accessible only within the UF campus network.

If you are working off campus, you will need to use the VPN to connect to the UF campus network using AnyConnect VPN or similar software. Please see: https://vpn.ufl.edu for additional information.

Open OnDemand

We are testing an Open OnDemand setup to provide a web-only interface to starting and attaching to GUI programs and Virtual Machines with seamless connections through web browsers. This service is now in Beta and is available at the following URL:

https://ondemand.rc.ufl.edu

To provide feedback, please open a support request with [OnDemand Feedback] in the subject. Please note:

Ondemand is currently a Beta service. Users are welcome to test the service and submit support requests with feedback. However, no SLA is guaranteed and all features should be considered experimental.

RC GUI-2.0

This is the second iteration of the UFRC approach to starting GUI programs in SLURM jobs on HiPerGator and attaching to them over any modern web browser.

Start Session

• Log into HiPerGator
• Load the environment module

$ module load gui/2

• Start a GUI session

• Example: RStudio with 2 cpus, 8gb of memory, 24 hours of run time

$ gui start -e rstudio -c 2 -m 8 -t 24

• Example: Matlab with default resources (1 cpu, 4gb memory, 2 hours of run time)

$ gui start -e matlab

See gui start -h to see all available options.

• Example: Hardware-accelerated MatLab instance

$ gui start --gpu -e matlab

Show Running Sessions

Note: Give the session from few seconds to a couple of minutes to start if the output is empty.

$ gui show

The output will look similar to the following e.g. with four active sessions and real passwords listed instead of 'REDACTED' in the example:

Current GUI sessions:
______________________________________________________________________________
#:  JobID    Application   Type  State       Reason
1: 38005270  rstudio       gui   RUNNING     
2: 38005271  rstudio       gui   RUNNING     
3: 38005272  rstudio       gui   RUNNING  
4: 38005355  matlab        gui   RUNNING     

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connection URLs:
1: https://gui3.rc.ufl.edu/4207/?password=REDACTED
2: https://gui3.rc.ufl.edu/5713/?password=REDACTED
3: https://gui5.rc.ufl.edu/12474/?password=REDACTED
4: https://gui5.rc.ufl.edu/4078/?password=REDACTED
______________________________________________________________________________

Please copy a connection URL and paste it into a modern web browser's
location bar on your LOCAL computer located on campus or connected via VPN

Connect To Session

• Attach to a session

Copy and paste a session URI into a modern browser (tested on Firefox and Chrome/Chromium) e.g.

https://gui3.rc.ufl.edu/4207/?password=REDACTED

As a result the browser tab becomes a 'desktop canvas' and the GUI program window should be visible and can be resized or maximized to the limits of the browser tab window as normal.

Stop a GUI Session

To stop a session either close the application, which will cause the SLURM job to automatically terminate, or cancel the session on the command-line with

gui stop SESSION_ID

E.g.

$ gui stop 3
Current GUI sessions:
______________________________________________________________________________
#:  JobID    Application   Type  State       Reason
1: 38005270  rstudio       gui   RUNNING     
2: 38005271  rstudio       gui   RUNNING     
3: 38005272  rstudio       gui   COMPLETING  Stopping session and cleaning up
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Connection URLs:
1: https://gui3.rc.ufl.edu/4207/?password=REDACTED
2: https://gui3.rc.ufl.edu/5713/?password=REDACTED
______________________________________________________________________________

Please copy a connection URL and paste it into a modern web browser's
location bar on your LOCAL computer located on campus or connected via VPN

This is all it should take to use the 2nd generation setup.

Hardware Accelerated GUI

This is a service to provide hardware acceleration for OpenGL applications needing 3D acceleration on HPG.

To use hardware acceleration for applications launched with gui/2 use the '--gpu' argument with 'gui start'

For older gui/1 approach, which uses Xpra client software please see the following page for more information:

Hardware Accelerated GUI Sessions

RC GUI-1.0

This is a classic client/server approach where a gui program is started in a SLURM job on HiPerGator and is wrapped in Xpra server. Once started the session can be attached from a remote (local) computer using the xpra client software. See GUI Version 1 page for documentation on using the server/client xpra approach for running Gui Applications on HiPerGator.