Remote Unix Desktop

The remote Unix Desktop is used for remotely accessing experimental and computational resources at SSRL. This is a client/server application: the free client needs to be installed on the user's home computer. The user will then be able to run all command line and X-Window based applications available at the macromolecular crystallography beam lines from that computer. The server side runs on a SSRL computer and it performs the bulk of the computation work. The client require minimal CPU and memory resources on the client computer. Only 20 kbps of network bandwidth is required for excellent performance.

The users access the beamline computers via a Linux desktop (NX client), which provides the same computing environment found at the crystallographic beamlines, including access to the data processing servers (BLCPUs) and the beamline control software (Blu-Ice).

NX clients are available for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Installation

Before accessing the NX Linux desktop for the first time, the user must follow a simple procedure to install and configure the NX client. See:

• NX installation and configuration for Linux and Windows
• NX installation and configuration for Mac OS X

Access to beamline computing facilities

After logging in to the NX server, the user may establish a remote internal connection to any SSRL SMB computer:

• Click on the Blu-Ice icon in the menu bar to open Blu-Ice.
• Click on the SSRL icon to open a BLCPU computer.
• Open a terminal window by clicking on the terminal icon or right-click anywhere on the desktop window and select a terminal from the menu.
• Log in to any desired machine as described in the computing environment document.