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lumi-vnc

License information

The lumi-vnc module provides scripts developed by CSC for LUMI.

Thse scripts are licensed under the MIT License, see the LICENSE file in the utily-tools repository for LUMI.

User documentation

VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing. It is a server running on the supercomputer and emulating an X11 server, rendering the image on the supercomputer and making it available to a client either via a VNC client that needs to be installed on your local machine, or via a web browser (using a web server included in the module and working with the VNC server).

The module is available in all environments on LUMI, including the default login environment.

To know how to start the VNC server, check the help information included in the most recent version of the module with module help command. The versions can be found in the list further down this page. E.g., assuming the most recent version is 20230110:

module help lumi-vnc/20230110

For most users, running start-vnc is sufficient and it will print information about how to connect in the terminal. The VNC server should be cleaned up automatically if you leave the shell from which it was started.

Known issues

Missing fonts

When testing with x11perf (included in the X11 modules on LUMI), certain tests fail due to missing fonts:

font '8x13' font '9x15' font '-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--14-130-75-75-c-140-jisx0208.1983-' font '-jis-fixed-medium-r-normal--24-230-75-75-c-240-jisx0208.1983-' font '-adobe-times-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-54-iso8859-1' font '-adobe-times-medium-r-normal--24-240-75-75-p-124-iso8859-1' font '-adobe-times-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-p-54-iso8859-1'

Pre-installed modules (and EasyConfigs)

To access module help and find out for which stacks and partitions the module is installed, use module spider lumi-vnc/<version>.

EasyConfig:

Technical documentation

Installs a singularity container with the TurboVNC server and some scripts and shell functions to start and stop the server.

Instructions for system staff

  • It is not yet possible to build the container on LUMI. Hence it has to be build offline. The EasyConfig file then expects to find the container in a tar file in the root directory of that archive, with the tar file named turbovnc-container-<version>.tar with <version> the version used for the module. The container file itself is called vnc.sif. The tar file is used to be able to store different versions of the container in the sources directory to be able to reproduce older versions in case of problems.

    That tar-file should then be put in a location where EasyBuild can find it, e.g., in /appl/lumi/sources/easybuild/l/lumi-vnc on uan04.

  • The EasyConfig file can then be used to install the TurboVNC container. Note though that downloading the sources if they are not yet in a location where EasyBuild can find them, e.g., in the directory mentioned above which is the master copy for the software installation.

Known issues (other than those mentioned in USER.md)

It is not possible to test a user install of the VNC container if the software directory or any other directory is soft-linked to a different file system (e.g., to have a personal repository in your home directory but have the installation which requires a higher quota on a different file system). The startup file for VNC will not be found and as a result the start-vnc command will fail to start a window manager.

EasyBuild

Version 20220125

  • This version was developed for LUMI as it was at the beginning of 2022 and continued to work after the February upgrade (which did upgrade the OS).

Version 20220715

  • This version was not properly tested when installed but was still installed as it was kind of an emergency situation after the June-July 2022 upgrade.

    It included an OS update to SLES15SP3 and matching COS, but lsof which was used in the script that starts the container was no longer available.

    Due to the holiday schedule this version had to be installed without proper testing on the compute nodes and before the patch was merged in the main branch.

Version 20221010

  • This version makes some corrections in the _start-vnc script to work around a race condition that could occur and then use port 0 instead of the right port for the web access to the VNC server.

Version 20230110

  • This version fixes a problem with non-routable hostnames that were used in the instructions for ssh port forwarding.

Archived EasyConfigs

The EasyConfigs below are additonal easyconfigs that are not directly available on the system for installation. Users are advised to use the newer ones and these archived ones are unsupported. They are still provided as a source of information should you need this, e.g., to understand the configuration that was used for earlier work on the system.