USF HII Compute Portal

HII-HPC Cluster

HII-HPC Cluster

X2Go for Graphical Access

The HII-HPC Cluster is inherently a Linux Command-Line Interface (CLI) environment and its computational resources are best accessed via that mode.

Although not generally promoted, HII realizes there will be special cases in which access to a graphical application on the cluster is necessary.

Please follow the instructions below to utilize the X2Go software to access a graphical application.

Please note other than the initial X2Go session, all graphical applications should be run on a compute node and not on the hii.rc.usf.edu or hii2.rc.usf.edu head nodes (see TIP 1) as this will cause issues with other command-line based users.

  • TIP 1: You may run utility programs like terminal, evince (pdf viewer), or file manager on the hii.rc.usf.edu or hii2.rc.usf.edu head node but please run the bigger graphical clients (Rstudio, etc.) from an interactive compute node session as detailed below because they can consume much greater resources.

  • TIP 2: Once you establish an interactive session on a compute node, you can run your graphical client in the background so you can run an additional graphical client without having to open another terminal and obtaining another interactive compute session. The syntax is nohup <command> &>/dev/null &, for example nohup xeyes &>/dev/null &.

X2Go software is available HERE

Instructions

Connect to the cluster via an X2Go session
  • Host: hii.rc.usf.edu or hii2.rc.usf.edu
  • Login: USF NetID
  • SSH Port: 22
  • Session Type: Gnome
Start a terminal from your X2Go session

From your Gnome Desktop:

Applications / System Tools / Terminal

Gain an interactive session on a compute node

X2Go does not set the hostname on the display so first we modify this so the compute node can get back to your X2Go session on hii.rc.usf.edu or hii2.rc.usf.edu:

hii$ export DISPLAY=$(echo hii.rc.usf.edu$DISPLAY) # or hii2.rc.usf.edu...

hii$ echo $DISPLAY # output should be either hii or hii2, depending on which you are using
hii.rc.usf.edu:55.0

The 55.0 part will vary based on your session.

Now start an interactive shell to access a compute node modifying time and resources as necessary:

hii$ srun --pty --partition=hii-interactive --cpus=4 --mem=30G --time=0-8 /bin/bash

The above command will start an interactive session from a compute node allocating 4 cpus, 30G of RAM running for up to 8 hours.

Now run your graphical application and it should display on your desktop (use xeyes as the simplest graphical application to test):

svc-3024-5-6$ xeyes

or you can run in the background to continue using the terminal:

svc-3024-5-6$ nohup xeyes &>/dev/null &