Accessing ari using x2go

[Predrag Punosevac]

Yichong Xu <yichongx at cs.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Hi Predrag,
> I recently get the attached error image when I try to access ari through x2go and x11 using my Mac. Do you have an idea how this might happen? Thank you very much!
> 

Hi Xu,

You are not the first and I am sure not the last person who is
complaining about X2Go. First I have no idea why it crashed even that I
saw icewm (Window Manager you are using) errors in the log. Proper
trouble shooting will involve some serious DTrace-ing which is not
available on Linux. You could try to launch just a terminal via X2Go
client and then type inside matlab which will bring MATLAB GUI.

My bigger concern is that we are running out of options for GUI access.
Namely X2Go is just an ugly insecure Perl wrapper around NX libraries (
compressed ssh -Y in essence). NoMachines the Italian company behind NX
protocol went fully proprietary few years ago and I suspect that libnx
libraries are no longer properly maintained. We could try to purchase
proprietary server license for NoMachines NX and see if it going to work
better. I am also concern that X2Go clients don't work properly on
certain platforms (primarily OS X). I use quite regularly X2Go from my
DragonFly BSD machine at home to connect to the lab and use MATLAB. It
works rock solid for me personally. 

Sadly if we were to run Windows server Microsoft RDP protocol is rather
stable.

VNC is another "option". However VNC is notoriously insecure and would
require lots of open ports to work. It is also supper buggy. I just used
it to do some DomU installations on Xen (that is the only possible way
to do HVM installation).

Best,
Predrag

> 
> 
> Yichong Xu
> Machine Learning Department, CMU
> yichongx at cs.cmu.edu
> 412-652-8309
> 
> 
> 
>