Revision as of 13:42, 18 September 2014

Purpose

The purpose of the terminal servers is to provide a standard linux desktop which also gives easy access to the linux grid facilities at DTU Compute. The servers are running a standard Ubuntu 12.04LTS. Access is done via dedicated hardware clients using the linux terminal server projects setup or software client using thinlinc client [1] or x2go [2]. The interface is based on the light weight LXDE.

Hardware

The servers consist of 2 HP servers with 56GB RAM and 24 cores each.

Requirements

To use the terminal:

• The login shell should be /bin/bash (most users has this a login shell).
• The LANG variable should be set in ~/.bashrc by adding *one* of the following linies:
  export LANG=en_US.utf8
  or
  export LANG=en_US
  Remove the following lines from your ~/.emacs if you set LANG=en_US.utf8:
  (set-terminal-coding-system 'iso-latin-1)
  (set-language-environment "Latin-1")
  (set-keyboard-coding-system 'iso-latin-1)
  Reason: SUN, hms1 &linuxgrid has en_US (i.e. a ISO based encoding) as default while linuxterm is having en_US.utf8 as default. By changing to a UTF8 based encoding all text file with special characters such as "æ", "ø" & "å" needs to be updated. This can for latex files be a significant challenge.

All accounts created since 2013 has LANG=en_US.utf8 as default.

Mini FAQ

• How do Iconnect using a SW client?
  See this page.
• How do Ichange the keyboard to a US layout on my thin client?
  Send an email to itsupport@compute.dtu.dk with the number of your client
• How do I add Matlab to the main task bar?
  On top on the "File Manager" icon (2nd from left) click the right mouse button and choose "Application Launch Bar Settings". Follow the menu system from there.
• The screen is black and it says something about SquashFS errors?
  Turn off and on the hardware. This error occurs if the hardware have lost connection to the server.
• Can I use the terminal as client for the winterm server?
  Yes, you can switch between Linux and Windows by pressing CTRL-ALT-F3 for Windows and CTRL-ALT-F4 for Linux.
• How do I get black text on white background in the terminals? On a terminal, go to Edit -> Preferences and change the colours there.
• How do I enable autoraise? Edit the file ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml and make sure that <followMouse> and <raiseOnFocus> are yes.

Connecting using a software client

You can either connect using the software client thinlinc freely available from http://www.cendio.com or x2go available from http://x2go.org. The name of the server is thinlinc2.compute.dtu.dk.

Note: to use x2go one must use en_US.utf8 as LANG. Also use the fullfonts version (Windows/Mac) - if not some applications will not be presented well (e.g. plots in "R"). Linux (Ubuntu) users should have gsfonts-x11 installed.