Manage interactive GUI desktop sessions.
Flight Desktop facilitates the creation of and access to interactive GUI desktop sessions within HPC enviornments. A user may select the type of desktop they wish to use and access it via the VNC protocol.
Flight Desktop is available as part of the Flight User Suite. This is the easiest method for installing Flight Desktop and all its dependencies. It is documented in the OpenFlight Documentation.
Flight Desktop is developed and tested with Ruby version 2.7.1 and bundler
2.1.4. Other versions may work but currently are not officially supported.
Also, a VNC password program is required at /usr/bin/vncpasswd. For example,
this can be provided by tigervnc-server. See the configuration section
below for details on how to use a different path.
The following will install from source using git. The master branch is
the current development version and may not be appropriate for a production
installation. Instead a tagged version should be checked out.
git clone https://github.com/alces-flight/flight-desktop.git
cd flight-desktop
git checkout <tag>
bundle config set --local with default
bundle config set --local without test
bundle install
Use the script located at bin/desktop to execute the tool.
Making changes to the default configuration is optional and can be achieved by
creating a config.yml file in the etc/ subdirectory of the tool. A
config.yml.ex file is distributed which outlines all the configuration
values available:
desktop_type- Global setting for default desktop type (defaults tognome).geometry- Global setting for default geometry (defaults to1024x768).bg_image- background image to use for (some) desktop types.access_hosts- array of host addresses/network ranges for machines considered to be "access hosts", i.e. hosts that can be logged into from outside the cluster (for e.g. login nodes).access_host- hostname to use to SSH into the cluster when accessing externally.access_ip- IP address of the machine on which Flight Desktop is installed that can be used to access it from external locations (only applies to designated "access hosts" and will default to the IP address of interface with the public route).vnc_passwd_program- program to use to generate VNC passwords (defaults to/usr/bin/vncpasswd).vnc_server_program- program to use to start VNC sessions (must be Flight Desktop compatible, defaults tolibexec/vncserverwithin Flight Desktop tree).
A brief usage guide is given below. See the help command for further
details and information about other commands.
Display the range of available desktop types using the avail command.
Verify that desktop type prerequisites are met using the verify command. If
they are not, use the prepare command to fulfil the prequisites and mark the
desktop type as verified -- note that superuser (root) access is required to
execute the prepare command as it will need to install distribution
packages.
Once verified, a user can start a desktop session with the start command.
Access desktop sessions using a VNC client as instructed by the output
from the start and show commands.
If Flight Desktop was installed via the OpenFlight package repos, you can read
more detailed usage instructions by running flight howto show flight desktop. Further information and examples of the desktop command are
available in the OpenFlight
documentation.
Fork the project. Make your feature addition or bug fix. Send a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.
Read CONTRIBUTING.md for more details.
Eclipse Public License 2.0, see LICENSE.txt for details.
Copyright (C) 2019-present Alces Flight Ltd.
This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0, or alternative license terms made available by Alces Flight Ltd - please direct inquiries about licensing to licensing@alces-flight.com.
Flight Desktop is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the Eclipse Public License 2.0 for more details.