National Magnetic Resonance Facility at Madison

NMRFAM_vncserver_Linux

Use vncserver to start a VNC server on an NMRFAM computer

If you are NOT physically logged into the NMRFAM computer, use vncserver to start a virtual desktop to run experiments remotely, process or analyze data

  1. Start a VNC server on the NMRFAM computer from your Mac OS-X computer
  • Open a terminal window on your Linux computer
  • ssh to the gateway computer:

ssh <username>@login1.nmrfam.wisc.edu

  • Replace <username> with your NMRFAM username
  • Enter your NMRFAM password
  • ssh to the spectrometer computer (e.g. shami)

ssh shami

  • Enter your NNMRFAM password
  • Start VNC server with command:

vncserver

  • Take note of the VNC server (or desktop) number that was started (e.g. shami:6).
  • Note that the first time you start a VNC server, the computer will request you to set a VNC password. This password can be set to anything and doesn’t have to be the same as the login password. To reset the VNC password, login to the spectrometer computer as shown above and type vncpasswd.
  • Note that setting the size of the VNC server window (by using the -geometry option) is not necessary as this can be automatically set by changing the size of the VNC window on your computer (see below).
  • Exit from NMRFAM computer

exit

  • Exit from login1 (or login2) computer

exit

  1. Access the VNC server from your Linux computer

On your Linux computer we are going to use vncviewer to connect to the VNC server running on the spectrometer computer.

Open a terminal window on your Linux computer

In the terminal window:

  • Start the vncviewer program with the ‘-via’ option to tunnel through login1 (or login2):

vncviewer -via <username>@login1.nmrfam.wisc.edu fleckvieh:1

  • Replace <username> with your NMRFAM username
  • Enter the NMRFAM spectrometer computer and VNC server number started in step 1 above (e.g. fleckvieh:1)
  • You will be prompted (in the terminal) to enter your NMRFAM password
  • The next password requested (in a pop-up window) is the VNC password
  • A new window will appear with the desktop from the spectrometer computer. You can now start topspin or vnmrj (or any other application installed there).