OSC::VNC

Ruby library that provides VNC job submission to the OSC systems.

Add this gem to your Gemfile:

gem 'osc-vnc'

Run Bundler to update your gems:

$ bundle install

For all cases we will need to create a new VNC session object. To create a VNC session object you need to supply it the required information:

• a PBS::Job object that connects to the specified batch server
• the PBS script that will run when the job is submitted, defined by
  • type of script (:vnc or :server)
    • :vnc launches a VNC server
    • :server doesn't launch a VNC server (expects developer specified server in xstartup)
  • cluster type (:glenn, :oakley, :ruby), not to be confused with the batch server (i.e., quick-batch can use :oakley or :ruby)

A bare bones setup would be:

job = PBS::Job.new(conn: PBS::Conn.batch('quick'))
script = OSC::VNC::ScriptView.new(
    :vnc,
    'oakley',
    :subtype => :shared,
    :xstartup => '/path/to/script',
    :outdir => ENV['PWD']
)

session = OSC::VNC::Session.new(job, script)

In most cases we will want to supply more options for finer control of the session:

# Headers are the PBS headers you see at the top of a PBS batch job.
# They are defined similarly here accept the header argument
# is used as a key in the PBS::ATTR hash object
# e.g., for a PBS job name (#PBS -N MyVNCJob)
headers = { PBS::ATTR[:N] => "MyVNCJob" }

# Resources are the attributes in the PBS batch job given with `-l`.
# e.g., for walltime (#PBS -l walltime=24:00:00)
resources = { walltime: "24:00:00" }

# Environment variables can also be passed to the script
envvars = { DATAFILE: "/path/to/datafile" }

To submit the VNC session, use the #submit instance method on the object:

session.submit(headers: headers, resources: resources, envvars: envvars)

After enough time has passed and the session is runninq in the batch system (i.e., not queued) there are a variety of formats to output the connection information. The most user-friendly being the *.jnlp format if the user has Java installed:

conn_info = OSC::VNC::ConnView.new(session)
conn_info.render(:jnlp)

Note: Once someone successfully authenticates with the VNC server the password will change if using vncauth form of authentication. So it is imperative that you run ConnView#refresh to update the connection information.

You can specify different options when running a vnc session. You can use the default set of VNC options to submit the job with or choose from pre-defined subtypes (i.e., :shared) found in config/script.yml.

You can alter these options when creating a session by specifying them as a hash in the when initializing the ScriptView object. An example:

# Specify your personal VNC session options to override defaults
script = OSC::VNC::ScriptView.new(
  :vnc,
  'oakley',
  :subtype => :shared,
  :geom => '1920x1200',
  :'otp?' => false,
  :'vncauth?' => true,
  :'ssh_tunnel?' => true,
  ...
)

An xstartup script is treated like any other bash script that launches the application you want. If no environment variables are needed, it could theoretically be run directly on an OSC desktop session by itself.

One such example would be launching Paraview:

#!/bin/bash

# This loads up any Xresources the user specifies
# as well as gives the background a nice grey color
if [ -e $HOME/.Xresources  ]; then
  xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
fi
xsetroot -solid grey

# We need a window manager otherwise the windows will
# look horrendous, for this we use FVWM (please refer to
# FillSim for an example of the `fvwmrc` file used)
export XSTARTUP_DIR=$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )
XDIR=${XSTARTUP_DIR} /usr/bin/fvwm -f ${XSTARTUP_DIR}/fvwm/fvwmrc &

# Load the required modules on Oakley
. /etc/profile.d/lmod.sh
module load paraview/3.14.1

# If we are running this app on a node with an Xorg server running
# i.e., there is a GPU on this node that we can utilize for OpenGL
# graphics (which is true for the Oxymoron cluster)
module load virtualgl/2.3

# Now we start the application
vglrun paraview

# Be sure to clean up the VNC server after the user exits the above
# running process
vncserver -kill ${DISPLAY}

You may or may not need VirtualGL depending on the type of application. Be sure to only use it on a node with an Xorg server running. For any other node you should omit it and its binary vglrun.

You can find a very generic example of an fvwmrc file in the containerfillsim GitHub repo under the path:

containerfillsim/jobs/vnc/paraview/fvwm/fvwmrc

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request