[daip] AIPS across VNC ?

[Nissim Kanekar]

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Eric Greisen wrote:

> Nissim Kanekar writes:
>
> > On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, Eric Greisen wrote:
> >
> > > Nissim Kanekar writes:
> > > >
> > > > Hi Eric,
> > > >
> > > > I'm trying to run AIPS across a remote VNC connection (which is much
> > > > faster than a direct ssh-based display across the net) but have run into a
> > > > problem with the display variables, with the TV, MESG and TEK servers not
> > > > opening at all. The problem seems to lie in the TVDISP, etc, variables,
> > > > when the DISPLAY variable is hostname:N, as is the case for a VNC
> > > > connection. I've tried forcing the TVDISP, TVHOST, etc to hostname:N, but
> > > > they seem to get re-assigned to :0 in the START_TVSERVERS script. Was
> > > > wondering if you happen to know a way around this.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I need to understand better what you mean here.
> > >
> > > I am assuming you are sitting at desktop and want to compute on
> > > server.  Does desktop run aips?  In other words are tasks on server
> > > talking to XAS on desktop or to XAS on server with display on desktop?
> > >
> > > Given that I have never heard of VNC it is totally not suprising that
> > > this does not work.  What command are you using to start aips?
> > >
> > > Eric Greisen
> > >
> >
> > Hi Eric,
> >
> > VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing; it essentially allows for
> > desktop sharing, by the transmission of mouse and keyboard events from one
> > computer to another. So it's a situation where I'm sitting on a desktop
> > and want to compute at a server but the server desktop is displayed on my
> > machine and keyboard/mouse events on mymachine are interpreted as
> > keyboard/mouse events on the server. The effect is that tasks run on the
> > server and also speak to XAS the server; however, the server display is
> > not to HOSTNAME:0 but to HOSTNAME:N, where N is the VNC number (usually 1,
> > if only one VNC connection is running).
> >
> > I've tried using "aips" to start AIPS and also "aips tv=server:server", as
> > I want to display the XAS on the server and not on my desktop. The first
> > fails because AIPS tries to set up the XAS display on my desktop across
> > the internet link while the second fails because :0 isn't an allowed
> > display over a VNC connection.
> >
> > The reason for using VNC over regular SSH-based displays is that it's
> > infinitely faster than the latter. I regularly use it to analyse my GBT
> > data on a GBT machine and to work in Socorro, while I'm away; the only
> > thing that doesn't seem to work is AIPS, probably because the TVDISP,
> > TVHOST and HOST variables are forced to HOSTNAME:0.
> >
>
> You are asking an awful lot of the aips startup script to understand
> all these permutations.  I believe that it does in fact but not when
> you use the one Inet XAS available to the server machine.  Make sure
> that $DISPLAY is <server>:n  (n > 0) and then do
>           aips tv=local
> this uses the display variable as set and runs XAS locally on the
> server.
>
> Eric Greisen
>

Hi Eric,

Yes, tv=local works fine ! I should have known that AIPS would already 
have a natural way of sorting things out...

Thanks a ton !
Nissim