NX

Welcome to the NX page

This page is where CHG'ers go to learn about connecting to CHG machines through NX (nomachine).

Intro to NX

NX Distributed Computing Architecture is a suite of technologies and commercial tools, designed to make network computing as easy and widespread as browsing the web. It consists of a thin layer of server software that enables any Unix computer to work as a terminal server. Clients are also available for a wide range of platforms and operating systems. NoMachine has chosen to build the foundations of its NX Distributed Computing Architecture on the well known and widely used X-Window System - the windowing system that's behind the Graphical User Interfaces of Linux and the Unix Operating System.

Troubleshooting NX

Error: NoMachine service not available on [server]

It may be that the your NX client key needs to be updated.

1. Obtain the latest key from a sysadmin type.
2. Replace the current key with the new key by either copying and pasting it or pointing NX to the new file containing the key.
   • The setting's location will vary depending your NX version and platform, but it is usually in the login settings panel.

xserver shuts down and user can't run xserver-related commands after being connected for 20 minutes.

Apparently in the new Mavericks OS, default ssh settings (as mentioned in ~/.ssh-config file) of ForwardX11Timeout parameter is 20 minutes, meaning that xserver is supposed to time out after 20 minutes in case of untrusted forwarding. ssh -X does untrusted forwarding of x server, so using ssh -X could trigger this problem.

Two possible solutions:

1. Change ForwardX11Timeout parameter to something like 7 d (7 days). This will cause xserver to time out in 7 days instead of 20 minutes if you use ssh -X - however, this still leaves the problem of the session timing out.
2. Use ssh -Y to connect (which does do trusted forwarding of xserver). It is not clear at this time if using ssh -Y means xserver will never shutdown.

~Information courtesy of Shrad