NX SOFTWARE

The purpose of NX software is to use a very light client, running on Windows or Linux, to open a KDE or GNOME session on NICE from the outside world.
NX software can be used by any ESRF support group (bliss, seg...) or scientist who have a NICE account.

Two systems: tet and bet.
- If you have a problem with one of the two systems, use the other one (thanks to inform the hotline of the problem)
- bet access is restricted to remote access. No persistent session possible, so we keep the load as low as possible on this server.
- tet is often overloaded because persistent sessions and local connections are allowed.
- Local access on tet is tolerated, only when it is necessary, otherwise you should still use Xming as X server on the intranet.
- Note that the standard SSH port via the firewall is 5022. (SSH clients other than NX)

INSTALLATION and CONFIGURATION

SERVER MAINTENANCE

To clean old sessions or to upgrade the software, the servers will be restarted regularly.
Preference for maintenance time will be during shutdown time in the afternoon. At this time, most of the users would be at the ESRF (then not running the NX software from their house) and as no experiment would be running, it could not stop remote experiment control.
Only members of nxusers mailling list will be warned. (To subscribe, send an email to nxusers-subscribe@esrf.fr)

COMMENTS

• The software is installed as found, some support will be provided but we cannot guarantee that all applications will run smoothly.
  If it doesn't work at your home, simply use the SSL gateway or another SSH client.
  You can nevertheless report any problem or comment to the ESRF hotline.
• Old suspended sessions on tet will be terminated after 4 days of inactivity
  
• Linux and Mac users will find the "NX Client for Linux" on http://www.nomachine.com
• Port 5122 and 5222 are reserved for NX clients (Windows or Linux)
  For any other SSH clients, use port 5022 as described in the SSH documentation.
• DISPLAY: If you type "echo $DISPLAY" on tet, you will see something like "unix:1137.0", but if are logged on a different system and want to export the DISPLAY, you will have to type "export DISPLAY=tet:1137" and not "unix:1137"
  It is of course easier to use "ssh -X " option, but if you are lost with your DISPLAY variable, you can see the detailed documentation about the DISPLAY written by Rainer Wilcke
  
• You can't access the font server from outside, so some softwares cannot be used (like mathematica)
• cygwin users may experience problems with NX software.
  A first solution is to make sure that there is only one cygwin1.dll on the system. It should be in your cygwin /bin directory.
  Delete cygwin1.dll located in /cygdrive/c/Program Files/NX Client for Windows/bin
  A second solution is given by the nomachine site:
  http://www.nomachine.com/ar/view.php?ar_id=AR12B00117
  You can also try to download the last version of the NX client.
• Other problems have been reported, like a conflict with a WEBCAM driver . Do not hesitate to consult the knowledge base of www.nomachine.com for help.
  
• Do not run CPU intensive applications directly on tet or bet: We provide powerful clusters for them.
• NoMachine NX currently supports the following applications (list established in 2007)
  
• 1. Mozilla Firefox
  2. Mozilla Thunderbird
  3. Sun OpenOffice/StarOffice
  4. Novell Evolution
  5. The KDE desktop and Konqueror browser and file manager
  6. The GNOME desktop and Nautilus file manager
  7. The CDE desktop and most Motif applications
  8. Most GNOME/GTK applications
  9. Most KDE/QT applications
     Many other applications are known to work in the NX environment, though NX may not support all the features or offer the same level of performance offered by the officially supported applications.