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Remote Desktop

The ARCC now provides remote compute Desktop sessions! You can request an in-browser remote Desktop session for Stokes or for Newton with GPU acceleration. Please note that this is provided as a convenience if your workflow requires it, we still recommend users to use headless submission scripts for command-line software that supports it.

These Desktop sessions offer a bare-bones desktop environment, and it assumes users know how to start their own programs. For ready-to-use software applications, refer to the Interactive Apps section instead.

Starting a Desktop session

  1. In the navigation bar, go to Interactive Apps > {Stokes, Newton} Desktop.
  2. In the Desktop setup, you may adjust certain job resource parameters such as number of threads and maximum job time. Click Launch. The desktop session will wait in a queue depending on availability, you may opt into receive an Email notification when the session is ready.
  3. Proceed to the next section to know how to enter your Desktop session.

Resuming a Desktop session

Interactive Desktops will remain running and allocate even if no browser is connected, allowing users the flexibility to resume the session in case the browser crashes or get disconnected from the internet. Please note that, as with any interactive jobs, the remaining job time will continue to decrease even if no browser is connected. When the job time expires all programs within the Desktop session will close and you'll need to request a new session, so save your work often!

  1. In the navigation bar, go to My Interactive Sessions.

  2. You may adjust your image quality depending on your internet connnection. Click Launch Desktop, and you'll be taken to a browser viewer, powered by noVNC. By default we offer the Xfce Desktop with a small selection of utilities, users can open a terminal window, load modules, and run interactive programs that way.

Quitting a Desktop session

As the job will continue to run in the background, it's important to ensure your job is stopped when you're done working to make the most efficient use of shared cluster resources. There are two ways to quit a desktop:

A) From within the Desktop session, logout from the desktop environment: Close all open windows > Start menu (Applications) > Logout > Uncheck Save session... > Logout.

B) From within the Open On-Demand interface:

  1. Click My Interactive Sessions in the navigation bar.

  2. Click Cancel next to the card corresponding to the job.