Connecting to DMOG using VNC

Before following the process below, this guide assumes you have an account on the cluster. If that is not the case, you can request one by contacting ISHelp@hw.ac.uk

You will first need to connect to DMOG via SSH as you normally would.

There are a few desktop environments available to use, you can see these with the following command:

flight desktop avail

You should see an output similar to this:

┌───────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Name  │ Summary                                                                              │
├───────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ gnome │ GNOME v3, a free and open-source desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems.│
│       │  > https://www.gnome.org/                                                            |
│ kde   │ KDE Plasma Desktop (KDE 4). Simple by default, powerful when needed.                 |
│       │  > https://kde.org/                                                                  │
│ xfce  │ Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment. It aims to be fast and user friendly.     |
│       │  > https://xfce.org/                                                                 │
└───────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

To start a session with your chosen desktop environment:

flight desktop start gnome

You should see an output similar to this:

== Session details ==
   Name:
   Identity: dda965c2-500d-4469-9eee-e51da4b26104
   Type: gnome
   Host IP: 137.195.249.10
   Hostname: login1
   Port: 5903
   Display: :3
   Password: GhoddOv4
   Geometry: 1024x768

This desktop session is not directly accessible from outside of your
cluster as it is running on a machine that only provides internal
cluster access.  In order to access your desktop session you will need
to perform port forwarding using 'ssh'.

Refer to 'flight desktop show dda965c2' for more details.

On the last line, run the command shown. In my example this would be

flight desktop show dda965c2

This will print the same information again, but with some key info added. Specifically, this will show the command you will need to use to connect to the VNC session:

This desktop session is not directly accessible from outside of your
cluster as it is running on a machine that only provides internal
cluster access.  In order to access your desktop session you will need
to perform port forwarding using 'ssh':

ssh -L 5903:137.195.249.10:5903 gp27@dmog.hw.ac.uk

(please note that this command assumes you are connecting to DMOG from on-campus or via the VPN. If you can’t connect to DMOG using just simple ‘ssh dmog.hw.ac.uk’ the above command won’t work. You will need to adjust your normal SSH command, for example:

ssh -tt -L 5903:localhost:5903 gp27@sshgw.hw.ac.uk -p 44788 ssh -L 5903:localhost:5903 137.195.249.10

Run this command on your local machine. Then switch over to your VNC client and connect to, in my example, localhost:5903. You will be prompted to enter a password, enter the password shown on DMOG.