[Beowulf] OT, X11 editor which works well for very remote systems?

[David Mathog]

Thanks for all the responses.

When I absolutely need a gui for something this this, I'll light up
BBC over ssh session. Performance has been good even crossing the big
pond.

What is BBC? Google wasn't much help given the British Broadcasting
Company's enormous web footprint.

Yes, nedit. It is old but it still works (especially for column
operations, which I use a lot). Admittedly it is useless with utf
encoded text, but 99.999% of what I do is ANSI, so that is rarely an
issue.

Regards,

David Mathog
***@caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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[Tony Brian Albers]

How about a local workstation that you connect to using X2go? Then just
ssh into the host you want to manage.

/tony

I miss SGI jot. It had this super strange GL offload to the client that
I’ve never seen since.
http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/documentation/sgi-faq/apps/6.html
We really need to find a solid way to do this whole remote GUI work.
https://2018.isc-program.com/?page_id=10&id=wksp122&sess=sess279
Makes me think.  1st workshop. Can’t ever be the first time this
question has been asked. Also David, absolutely not OT. Very much on topic.
J.
Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away.  No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful.  Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Tel: [phone]
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[Deng Xiaodong]

In this case I would think SSH + nano/vi may be better choice as the data
transited is less.

Another way to bypass may be to use scp to copy files between your remote
and local machines then edit locally?

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
_______________________________________________
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[Skylar Thompson]

vim actually can actually use SCP automatically using URL-style file paths:

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Editing_remote_files_via_scp_in_vim

Post by Deng Xiaodong
In this case I would think SSH + nano/vi may be better choice as the data
transited is less.
Another way to bypass may be to use scp to copy files between your remote
and local machines then edit locally?

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
_______________________________________________
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf

_______________________________________________
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[David Mathog]

I came here to say what Ryan just did.
X11 < VNC < NX < FastX

My experience with X11 and VNC for on campus connections was that the
speed order was the other way around for those two. Perhaps it matters
which VNC is used.

NX is the Siemen's product or something else?

FastX is a Starnet product and due to a long ago dispute they are on my
personal "never do business with" list.

Just in case this was an nedit only issue I also tried Mousepad
remotely, but the startup was just as slow. The menus would open in one
fell swoop instead of being written top to bottom and then bottom to
top. However, the menus were just as unusable, with long lags after
selecting an item. Window resizing worked much better with Mousepad
than nedit, with the latter apparently doing many more redraws.

So far it looks like the best bet for any major editing is to download
the file, edit locally, and upload. Be that explicitly or via some
remote mount file system.

Thanks all,


David Mathog
***@caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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[Hernan Olivera]

Hi all

I've solved this using RDP instead VNC, with very improved velocity. You
have to deal with installing and configuring it in the server, but it works
fine.

Cheers

Post by David Mathog

I came here to say what Ryan just did.
X11 < VNC < NX < FastX

My experience with X11 and VNC for on campus connections was that the
speed order was the other way around for those two. Perhaps it matters
which VNC is used.
NX is the Siemen's product or something else?
FastX is a Starnet product and due to a long ago dispute they are on my
personal "never do business with" list.
Just in case this was an nedit only issue I also tried Mousepad remotely,
but the startup was just as slow. The menus would open in one fell swoop
instead of being written top to bottom and then bottom to top. However,
the menus were just as unusable, with long lags after selecting an item.
Window resizing worked much better with Mousepad than nedit, with the
latter apparently doing many more redraws.
So far it looks like the best bet for any major editing is to download the
file, edit locally, and upload. Be that explicitly or via some remote
mount file system.
Thanks all,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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[John Hearns via Beowulf]

Tony, not to be rude but not really.
Teradici is more than thin terminals. They apply smart compression, which I
am told compresses textual parts of the screen differently to graphics.
They also have 'buidl to lossless' for slower links - so if you rotate a
model it is blurry then sharpens up to lossless when you stop rotating.

Teradici PCOIP - I used the hardware version of PCOIP with cards in
workstations and zero (thin) clients on desks.
Works great. Completely transparent to users. If you are working in a
secure environment then you should really, really look at this.
I had one customer who was working at a UK secure site. He had a cluster
room, and a small room next door with Windows PCs.
He would have to walk over to work on the PCs as they were not connected
to his office network.
First time I visited the site I recommended Teradici and they were a
great success - the card/terminals have options for fibre connections
which are again used on many secure sites.

Back in the day (late 90's) that technology was known as SunRay Terminals
;)
--
Tony Albers
Systems administrator, IT-development
Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Tel: [phone]
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[Tony Brian Albers]

No problem, I didn't think you were trying to.

Are you in Copenhagen? Enjoy your stay. I was born and raised there, but
now I live in the countryside and work in Aarhus -suits me a lot better.

/tony

Tony, I really did not mean to shoot you down. Yes thin terminals, but
they have smart processing.
And hello from a sunny Kobenhavn.
I see, so quite a bit more than what SR's could.
Thanks for the clarification.
/tony

Post by John Hearns via Beowulf
Tony, not to be rude but not really.
Teradici is more than thin terminals. They apply smart compression,
which I am told compresses textual parts of the screen differently to
graphics.
They also have 'buidl to lossless' for slower links - so if you rotate a
model it is blurry then sharpens up to lossless when you stop rotating.
     > Teradici PCOIP - I used the hardware version of PCOIP with cards in
     > workstations and zero (thin) clients on desks.
     > Works great. Completely transparent to users. If you are working in a
     > secure environment then you should really, really look at this.
     > I had one customer who was working at a UK secure site. He had a cluster
     > room, and a small room next door with Windows PCs.
     > He would have to walk over to work on the PCs as they were not connected
     > to his office network.
     > First time I visited the site I recommended Teradici and they were a
     > great success - the card/terminals have options for fibre connections
     > which are again used on many secure sites.
     >
     >
     >
     Back in the day (late 90's) that technology was known as SunRay
     Terminals ;)
     --
     Tony Albers
     Systems administrator, IT-development
     Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
     Tel: [phone]
     _______________________________________________

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[Joe Landman]

Wait ... nedit? I wrote my thesis with that (LaTeX) some (mumble) decades
ago ...

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
_______________________________________________
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[Gerald Henriksen]

Does enabling ssh compression with -C help?

The local side is over putty from a Windows machine. Enabled its ssh
compression option, which I think is the same thing. It didn't make a
noticeable difference.

Haven't used it but Visual Studio Code can apparently remote edit
using an extension:

https://spin.atomicobject.com/2017/12/18/remote-vscode-file-editing/


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[Joe Landman]

typed on a phone, so auto-co-wrecked ... VNC

Post by David Mathog
Thanks for all the responses.

When I absolutely need a gui for something this this, I'll light up
BBC over ssh session.  Performance has been good even crossing the big
pond.

What is BBC?  Google wasn't much help given the British Broadcasting
Company's enormous web footprint.
Yes, nedit.  It is old but it still works (especially for column
operations, which I use a lot).  Admittedly it is useless with utf
encoded text, but 99.999% of what I do is ANSI, so that is rarely an
issue.
Regards,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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[Andrew Latham]

You can use a local editor and sshfs to shift the load if that helps.

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
_______________________________________________
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit
http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf

[Tomasz Rola]

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays
are such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time
redrawing to be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.

I have not used it but description sounds somewhat credible (other
packages for Emacs worked when I used them):

[ http://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/ ]

An overview of TRAMP

TRAMP is for transparently accessing remote files from within
Emacs. TRAMP enables an easy, convenient, and consistent interface to
remote files as if they are local files. TRAMP’s transparency extends
to editing, version control, and dired.

TRAMP can access remote hosts using any number of access methods, such
as rsh, rlogin, telnet, and related programs. If these programs can
successfully pass ASCII characters, TRAMP can use them. TRAMP does not
require or mandate 8-bit clean connections.

TRAMP’s most common access method is through ssh, a more secure
alternative to ftp and other older access methods.

TRAMP on MS Windows operating systems is integrated with the PuTTY
package, and uses the plink program.

etc. etc.

HTH
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:***@bigfoot.com **
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[James Cloos]

DM> Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?

You'll want one which uses xerver-side fonts instead of client-side
fonts (ie fonts shows by xlsfonts rather than ones shown by fc-list)
and to avoid all recent x11 toolkits (gtk, qt or the like).

Emacs compiled for xaw (aka athena) or motif would work.

You'll need to compile your own, though, since all of the binary dists
use the gtk build these days.

That said, for most remote editing I prefer emacs or vi/vim w/o X11.
(Ususally called emacs-nox or vim-nox in apt or yum). Even busybox's
vi is enough for simple editing.

-JimC

[John Hearns via Beowulf]

As I am on the subject, it can be hard to assess exactly what the problem
is with remote graphics.
Remember that a squeaky wheel gets more attention.

I was involved with one link to a site in Europe which was using CAD
remotely. I really was never sure whether or not the users
were just unhappy that they had to work in a different way, or that they
were really frustrated by the latency they experienced.
A good solution would have been to have my fly out and sit beside the
users, but this was not on the cards.
I did have several sessions on the phone, watching bandwidth usage and
counters as the users rotated their models.

One telling story is that I did one day get reports of the remote access
being almost unuseable. A lot of flood pings and traceroutes later I proved
that the network link was dropping a huge percentageof packets and the
network provider switches the circuit over...

There are such things as WAN emulators, which introduce delay and packet
loss into links. If I was to do work like this again I would set up a
WAN emulator in the lab first and see what the quality of the experience is
before installing a solution at the remote end.
Time spent here will be well repaid
http://wanbully.com/home/tools/wan-emulation/

Makes me think. 1st workshop. Can’t ever be the first time this

question has been asked. Also David, absolutely not OT. Very much on topic.
Maybe...
For my contribution if you use Windows then MobaXterm is an excellent
tool. IT wraps up Putty, VNC, Cygwin X server etc. etc in one package.
VirtualGL - to be honest I dint think much of this. Hard to set up, and
you had to 'vglrun application'. I know this can be a wrapper.
To be fair, one place where I worked really favoured it.
NICE DCV - absolutely simple to set up, works great and is transparent to
users. You can enable and disable it easily also.
Teradici PCOIP - I used the hardware version of PCOIP with cards in
workstations and zero (thin) clients on desks.
Works great. Completely transparent to users. If you are working in a
secure environment then you should really, really look at this.
I had one customer who was working at a UK secure site. He had a cluster
room, and a small room next door with Windows PCs.
He would have to walk over to work on the PCs as they were not connected
to his office network.
First time I visited the site I recommended Teradici and they were a great
success - the card/terminals have options for fibre connections
which are again used on many secure sites.

I miss SGI jot. It had this super strange GL offload to the client that
I’ve never seen since.
http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/documentation/sgi-faq/apps/6.html
We really need to find a solid way to do this whole remote GUI work.
https://2018.isc-program.com/?page_id=10&id=wksp122&sess=sess279
Makes me think. 1st workshop. Can’t ever be the first time this question
has been asked. Also David, absolutely not OT. Very much on topic.
J.

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
_______________________________________________
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[Gavin W. Burris]

Pretty sure your problem is X11, not the editor. VNC or FastX or NX or similar would likely solve the problem.

I came here to say what Ryan just did.

X11 < VNC < NX < FastX

Or just skip it and use the MobaXterm file browser to open the remote file with your preferred client-side editor in Windows.

Cheers.
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Senior Project Leader for Research Computing
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
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[Tim Cutts]

On 7 Jun 2018, at 03:14, James Cuff <***@nextplatform.com<mailto:***@nextplatform.com>> wrote:


I miss SGI jot. It had this super strange GL offload to the client that I’ve never seen since.

http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/documentation/sgi-faq/apps/6.html


You’re a very bad man, Cuff. Jot, and everything else written with IrisGL, was an abomination. I still have nightmares about ANSIG, an interactive program for assigning 4D NMR spectra, which was written more than 20 years ago in FORTRAN77 and IrisGL. Chances of porting to anything other than IRIX: Zero. [ Idly wonders what those folks use these days ]

We really need to find a solid way to do this whole remote GUI work.

https://2018.isc-program.com/?page_id=10&id=wksp122&sess=sess279

Makes me think. 1st workshop. Can’t ever be the first time this question has been asked. Also David, absolutely not OT. Very much on topic.

I think X11 was a fairly good idea, in theory, for how to deal with this problem. The implementation may have left something to be desired, I suppose.

In practice I virtually never use X11 any more. I use probably two X11 applications, both of them once in a blue moon. One of them is a local legacy program about to be replaced by a web app, and the other is gitk.

I long since stopped using graphical editors on Linux. I’ve toyed with them on MacOS since.

Tim

[Lux, Jim (337K)]

From: Beowulf <beowulf-***@beowulf.org> on behalf of Tim Cutts <***@sanger.ac.uk>
Date: Thursday, June 7, 2018 at 8:03 AM
To: James Cuff <***@nextplatform.com>
Cc: "***@beowulf.org" <***@beowulf.org>, mathog <***@caltech.edu>
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] OT, X11 editor which works well for very remote systems?


I think X11 was a fairly good idea, in theory, for how to deal with this problem. The implementation may have left something to be desired, I suppose.

In practice I virtually never use X11 any more. I use probably two X11 applications, both of them once in a blue moon. One of them is a local legacy program about to be replaced by a web app, and the other is gitk.

I long since stopped using graphical editors on Linux. I’ve toyed with them on MacOS since.


But how do you edit powerpoint slides remotely?

Realistically, remote CAD tools are an excellent example of where you want to send high res graphics remotely. You have your drawing database hosted “elsewhere” and you need to do things like view solid models and such, without sending 100s of MB of files around. It’s about interactive latency more than total bits sent during a session. If I render the image on the server, and I only have to send the images to my remote unit that’s probably something that can be done “fast” over a skinnier pipe (e.g. a cellular modem).

Think of doing work on an airplane through the somewhat lame internet connectivity available. There have been several times in the last couple years where it was better for me to remote console to a desktop machine and run Matlab there, than to try and move the 30GB data file to my laptop and run Matlab locally. Yeah, the remote desktop has its issues, but it’s minor compared to trying to move a big dataset in competition with the people streaming video in the seats around me. That said, “interactive 3D scrolling” is terrible in that environment. But I think that’s a flaw in the remote desktop implementation.

[Alex Chekholko via Beowulf]

You can try to use 'mosh' which will echo local characters before they are
echoed on the remote side. YMMV.
https://mosh.org/

Off Topic.
I need to do some work on a system 3000 miles away. No problem
connecting to it with ssh or setting X11 forwarding, but the delays are
such that my usual editor (nedit) spends far too much time redrawing to
be useful. Resizing a screen is particularly painful.
Are there any X11 GUI editors that are less sensitive to these issues?
If not I will just use nano or vim.
Thanks,
David Mathog
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech
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