SunRay thin clients

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August 2014: Usage of the SunRay servers are no longer supported. Use the linux terminal server


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DTU Compute offers a Sun Solaris 10 desktop environment. It is a centrally managed and maintained thin client environment offering users an instant "plug and play" access to a fully equipped desktop environment via either a Sun Ray terminal or Thinlinc software.The SunRay terminals combines a a basic "desktop platform" with easy access to other computing facilities like the linux cluster. The SunRay servers include a server sunfire which does not host sessions directly but can be used for more CPU intensive applications like e.g. matlab etc.

Desktops and Desktop applications

The following desktops are provided for Sun Solaris 10 at DTU Compute:

  • Sun Java DesktopSystem (read more here)
    This is somewhat unconfigured by DTU Compute ITsupport. The suite of specific non-JDS application (like matlab) is found under Launch -> Applications -> IMM
  • Sun Common Desktop Environment (read more about CDE here)
    DTU Compute provided applications are found by pressing the middle mouse button on the background or typing <ALT> F10
  • Solaris IceWM (read more about IceWM here)
    DTU Compute provided applications are completely integrated in the menu system.
  • xterm - this is just for emergency when something is really messed up.

The SunRay/thinlinc access does not only provide only access to standard "desktop applications" but also to the linux grid.

Note: throughout this page a text string in "[]" signifies the corresponding command line e.g. "LyX: [lyx]" means that the program LyX can be started from the command line with the command "lyx".

Office utilities

LaTeX:
OpenOffice 3.1
: [oo] An alternative to Microsoft Office, and very similar to its interface. Good support for Microsoft Office 2003 documents and some support for Office 2007 documents. StarOffice 8 [soffice8], which is based on OpenOffice 2.x, is available as well.
immletter: [immletter] a wrapper script for latex for making latter with DTUletterheads.
texmaker: [texmaker] A GUI based LateX editor (like winedt for Windows)
LyX: [lyx] A WSIWYG editor for latex
Gnuplot: [gnuplot] the traditional 2D plotting program
Grace: [xmgrace] an alternative 2D plotting program
XFig: [xfig] Drawing program
acroread: [acroread] for reading PDF files (version 8.1.x). Version 7 available to [acroread7]. To merge/split/etc. either use the acrobat on winterm or the two small command line utilities joinPDF & splitPDF [joinPDF/splitPDF].
XPP: [xpp] - a graphical interface to use the capabilities of a printer (duplex, n-up, etc).

Email programs

Thunderbird: [thunderbird] is the recommended email program on the SUNservers. Setup information
Pine: [pine] can be used as a command line interface. If your incoming mail is delivered to serv1 your Inbox has already been setup but if you incoming mail is delivered to exchange.imm.dtu.dk you should setup an inbox as:
inbox-path={exchange.imm.dtu.dk:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert/notls/user=XX}
replace "XX" with your username.
Dtmail: [dtmail] is still available but is strongly depreciated.
Evolution: [evolution] not well tested though and not supported by DTU Compute IT support.

Browsers and other internet utilities

Firefox: [firefox] version 3.6.x. Version 3.5 [firefox35] installed as well. Recommended browser.
Opera: [opera] version 9.x. Alternative browser
Lynx: [lynx] the classic command line browser
Mozilla: [mozilla] version 1.7. Usage strongly depreciated.
Pidgin: [pidgin]
Gaim: [gaim]

Other Software

Mathematical and Statistical related programs

Generally newer versions and better performance are available/can be obtained if executed on hms1 or the linuxgrid!

Matlab: [matlab] Default version 2006b. Version 2007b [matlab75] and version 2008b available as well [matlab77].
Mathematica: [mathematica/math] Default version 6.0.
Maple: [xmaple/maple] version 12.
Octave: [octave] version 3.0.0
SAS: [sas] version 9.1.3
R: [R] version 2.8.1.
Splus: [Splus] version 8.0.4.

Compilers etc.

SUN Studio: [sunstudio] Compilers (cc, CC, f90) from SUN Studio 12u1. Includes the performance analyzer [analyzer].
GNU compiler suite: (gcc, g++, gdb, etc.) version 3.4.3 from blastwave
Netbeans: [netbeans] Programming IDE made by Sun for JAVA exclusively.
Eclipse: [eclipse] - a development platform
DDD: [ddd] Data Display Debugger version 3.3.11
Totalview: [totalview] - a source level debugger
SmartCVS: [smartcvs] version 6.0.5
SmartSVN: [smartsvn] version 2. A graphical subversion client. Version 4 installed as well [smartsvn4]

Other

CPLEX: version 10 [cplex]. Default is a 32 bit version but a 64 bit version is available as well [cplex64]
GAMS: versions 21.5 [gams]

Special set-up to be aware of

"Space" directories
On each server machine you will find a directory named /space. This is an area without disk quota and where everybody can write. Files in this directory are deleted when they haven't been accessed for a period of 3 days. The space directory of serv1 is nfs mounted on all servers as /space1 and the space directory of sunfire is mounted as /spacefire on all machines.

CPU usage
Jobs exceeding 15 minutes of CPU time will automatically be reniced. If you are running to many time consuming jobs on one host, some of them will be stopped (and you will have to restart them manually).

PATH
Files/scripts, which you can run under both Solaris and Linux should be placed in ~/bin while files/scripts which is only valid under Solaris should be placed in ~/bin/sun. Files/scripts which can only be executed under Linux should be placed in ~/bin/linux. If a file is present in both e.g. ~/bin/sun and ~/bin the file in ~/bin/sun take precedence. A similar layout applies for man pages: ~/man for pages valid for Solaris Linux; ~/man/sun for Solaris only and ~/man/linux for linux only. Aliases etc. defined in ~/.kshrc is valid in both Solaris Linux (ksh users). Aliases etc. defined in ~/.bashrc are valid in both Solaris and Linux (bash users).

Backup
Everything under /home, /project, /www, and /var/mail (but not /space and /nobackup) is being backed up each night. The main purpose of the backup is "crash recovery", i.e. to minimize data loss in case of a hard disk failure. However, if you delete a file unintentionally, it can be recovered assuming that the following information is provided: Which file(s)/directory was deleted? When was it deleted? When was it last time edited/modified before it was deleted? Expect at least one full working day for recovery. Backups are kept up to 3 months back.