Virtual Desktop Interface

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Jul 06, 2022
1 min read

Open OnDemand allows users to start a MATE or XFCE session on the compute nodes when they need access to a desktop environment (DE).  To provide a virtual desktop, OOD loads a singularity container for the DE that you have requested. The container mounts ${HOME} and /share/Apps, so that you have full access to your home directory and software stack. Open a terminal and run your applications like you normally would. Some application such as Mathematica appear in the Applications menu. This is not as intended and do not email Research Computing staff to add your favorite application to the Applications menu no matter how popular you think that application is.

Desktop Environment

X-server is not installed on the compute nodes, so do not expect to request an interactive session and have access to GUI applications.

When using VDI, you might see a performance drop when accessing applications either from the command line or as a GUI. 


Applications known to work (documentation coming soon)

  • GaussView 
  • GNUPlot
  • PWGUI
  • PyMol 
  • VESTA 
  • VMD 
  • XCrySDen 
  • GNU Octave
  • Maple
  • MATLAB (2016a and 2018a only)
  • Mathematica
  • Ansys Workbench (17.1 only)
  • Abaqus CAE (2019 only)
  • Paraview
  • SAS


If applications not listed above work for you, please email RC staff with  detailed list of steps required to run that application. Alternatively, feel free to build your own packages on Docker or Singularity. You can start with the Dockerfiles or Singularity definitiion files from https://github.com/alexpacheco/lurc-ood-desktop and send a pull request with your modifications.