Graphical Interfaces (X11)
To use a graphical interface on the clusters and you choose not to use the web portal, your connection needs to be set up for X11 forwarding, which will transmit the graphical window from the cluster back to your local machine.
A simple test to see if your setup is working is to run the command xclock .
You should see a simple analog clock window pop up.
On macOS
- Download and install the latest X-Quartz release.
- Log out and log back in to your Mac to reset some variables
- When using ssh to log in to the clusters, use the
-Yoption to enable X11 forwarding. Example:ssh -Y netid@grace.ycrc.yale.edu
Note: if you get the error "cannot open display", please open an X-Quartz terminal and run the following command, and then log in to the cluster from the X-Quartz terminal:
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist
On Windows
We recommend MobaXterm for connecting to the clusters from Windows. It is configured for X11 forwarding out of the box and should require no additional configuration or software.
Quick Test
A quick and simple test to check if X11 forwarding is working is to run the command xclock in the session you expect to be forwarding. After a short delay, you should see a window with a simple clock pop up.
Submit an X11 enabled Job
Once configured, you'll usually want to use X11 forwarding on a compute node to do your work. To allocate a simple interactive session with X11 forwarding:
salloc --x11
For more Slurm options, see our Slurm documentation.