These instructions are for setting up an SSH connection with X11 forwarding from a Windows computer into a University workstation using your UniBonn account. With this connection you will have access to software and files necessary to perform the lab from your home. These instructions have been tested on a Windows 10 computer.
The setup for SSH is more complicated on Windows than on a Linux or a Mac and
you will need to download two third party programs (PuTTY and VcXsrv). If you
are not comfortable with this, or if this solution does not work for you, there
is also an alternative option of performing the lab on the provided virtual
machine which also includes the necessary software and files. The drawback of
the Virtual Machine is that it will be slower than using the University
workstation.
If you have any questions about these instructions or if you encounter any problems while following these instructions, feel free to contact me at “[email protected]”. Please remember that there is also the option of using the Virtual Machine if this setup does not work for you.
I would like to apologize in advanced for inconsistencies in these instructions compared to what you will see when you install the necessary software. The setup was tried on a computer with Swedish language as standard. So some of the images used in these instruction will be in Swedish. I have guessed what the English translation should be, but some of the buttons in the setup will likely differ from what I say in these instructions.
To make an SSH connection you need an SSH client. An SSH client makes it
possible for us to open a connection into the University workstation using our
Uni-ID. Therefore, you need to make sure that you have a working Uni-ID and that
you remember your password before continuing with this tutorial. In this
tutorial we use the SSH client PuTTY, which is widely used. Download PuTTY
at this link: PuTTY
Download the msi file for 32 or 64 bit (depending on your system).
Execute the .msi file and follow the installation wizard to complete the
installation. The steps are: click Next, choose the desired installation
folder and press Next. Lastly you can change the features to include a desktop
shortcut, or simply leave it as it is and press Install.
After the installation is complete you can test if the installation was successful by starting the PuTTY application.
It should open a window that looks like this:
If this opens successfully you can close the window and we can move on to the next step.
PuTTY makes it possible to create a remote connection to a university
workstation. However, we also need to enable X11 forwarding to be able to view
graphical display tools like images and GUI’s. This makes it possible to view
images and histograms that are needed / produced during the labs. To do this one
needs to download an X-forwarding client. These instructions use VcXsrv that
can be downloaded from this link:
VcXsrv.
Click the green “Download” button to download an exe file.
Run the exe file. The installation is from an unknown distributor, so a warning might appear. If this happens click “Details” and then click “Run”.
After this the installation wizard should open. I chose to deactivate the desktop shortcut, if you want this you can simply click “Next” directly.
Choose the installation path and click “Install”.
After the installation is complete you should now have the application “XLaunch”.
Open the “XLaunch” application, you should see a window that looks like this:
Make sure the “Multiple Windows” option is ticked and click “Next”.
Choose the option “Start no client” and click “Next”.
Leave the default settings and click “Next”.
Lastly press “Complete”.
This has started our X-forwarding client. We can now open PuTTY. In PuTTY we need to activate X11 forwarding however. Go to “Connection → SSH → X11” and click the “Enable X11 forwarding” option.
Now you can go back to “Session”. In “Host Name” you write:
<my_user_id>@desktop.physik.uni-bonn.de
where you replace <my_user_id> with your Uni-ID. After you have filled in the host name you can click on “Open”.
A black console should appear and also a dialogue box. The dialogue box tells you that the host key is unknown, to add it to our known hosts you click “Yes”.
In the black console you will be asked for your Uni-ID password. Type in your password and press Enter.
After you have logged in you should now be in the home directory of your university account.
You can type “ls” and press Enter to see what is in the directory.
To test if X-forwarding is enabled you can type xclock and press Enter. A new
window with a clock should now appear. If the clock does not appear make sure
you ran XLaunch and enabled X11 forwarding in PuTTY before you connected to the
university desktop.
This concludes the setup necessary to be able to perform the lab remotely. If you want you can move on to the next step which explains how you can perform the lab remotely, or you can now exit the SSH session by typing “exit” in the console and pressing Enter.
These are instructions for how you can perform the E213 lab using X11 forwarding on a Windows.
Every time you want to make an SSH connection to the University workstation you need to enavle X11 forwarding in “Connection→SSH→X11”. If you have restarted you computer you need to repeat the entire Step 3: Activate X-Forwarding in chapter Setup. That means you need to launch XLaunch before starting PuTTY.
Once again you can use the command ls to view what is in your home directory.
One of the things you should see is a directory named Desktop. We can move
into this directory with the cd command. Simply type in cd Desktop and press
Enter. Now we can copy the lab files into our Desktop directory by entering this
command:
cp -r /cephfs/user/ooencel/E213 .Here cp is the command for copy, -r is the option that we want to copy the
entire folder, /cephfs/user/ooencel/E213 is the folder we want to copy and .
means that we want to copy it to the directory we are currently in (i.e.
Desktop). Please note the space between E213 and the dot.
If you enter ls again you should now see that you have a directory named
E213 in you Desktop directory. You can now follow the instructions to perform
the lab. You move between different directories using the command cd. To open
an image file you use the command evince and the name of the file, for example
evince ee_1.pdf.
However, it might be tedious to view all image files using the command evince.
So it might be easier if you copy the directory with the image files named
EventDisplay inside the E213 directory to your local computer. We need to
find the location of the EventDisplay directory on the University workstation.
Move into the directory by entering cd E213/EventDisplay. Now enter the
command pwd and you should see something like this:
/gpfs/share/home/<my_user_id>/Desktop/E213/EventDisplay
To copy the content to your local computer you need to open the Command Prompt
on your Windows. This can be done by entering cmd in the search bar of your
computer.
In the Command Prompt you can view the content of your current directory with the command “dir”. You can move into another directory with the command “cd” (same as in Linux). You can make a new directory using the command “mkdir” (same as in Linux). So let us move into our Desktop and create a new directory there.
cd Desktop
mkdir E213images
cd E213imagesNow you can copy the content to your local E213images folder with the command:
pscp -r <my_user_id>@desktop.physik.uni-bonn.de:/gpfs/share/home/<my_user_id>/Desktop/E213/EventDisplay .