Accessing Franklin¶

X11 Forwarding¶

Some software has a Graphical User Interface (GUI), and so requires X11 to be enabled. X11 forwarding allows an application on a remote server (in this case, Franklin) to render its GUI on a local system (your computer). How this is enabled depends on the operating system the computer you are using to access Franklin is running.

Linux¶

If you are SSHing from a Linux distribution, you likely already have an X11 server running locally, and can support forwarding natively. If you are on campus, you can use the -Y flag to enable it, like:

$ ssh -Y [USER]@franklin.hpc.ucdavis.edu

If you are off campus on a slower internet connection, you may get better performance by enabling compression with:

$ ssh -Y [USER]@franklin.hpc.ucdavis.edu

MacOS¶

MacOS does not come with an X11 implementation out of the box. You will first need to install the free, open-source XQuartz package, after which you can use the same ssh flags as described in the Linux instructions.

Windows¶

If you are using our recommend windows SSH client, MobaXterm, X11 forwarding should be enabled by default. You can confirm this by checking that the X11-Forwarding box is ticked under your Franklin session settings. For off-campus access, you may want to tick the Compression box as well.