In order to run graphical applications on Acropolis with out VNC you will need to open an SSH session capable of X11 forwarding. Unlike VNC your applications will not continue to run once your SSH session has ended. This method is only suitable for short running applications. It may be very slow when connecting from off campus.
General Applications
Windows
On Windows you will need an SSH client such as Putty. In most cases the installer “putty-64bit-0.70-installer.msi” will be fine.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html
You will also need an X11 server such as Xming
https://sourceforge.net/projects/xming/
Once Xming is installed click to launch it. You should see the icon in the bottom system tray. It might not actually display much of anything just yet.
Launch Putty. On the left click SSH > X11. Check the box “Enable X11 forwarding”.
On the left scroll up to Session. Enter acropolis.uchicago.edu as the host. You may want to enter a name under Saved Sessions and click Save.
Click Open and log into Acropolis with your CNetID and password.
From the command line run the command “x11launcher”. Choose the application you would like to run on the head node or cluster nodes.
MacOS\Linux
Open the Terminal application.
SSH into Acropolis with X11 forwarding enabled. Replace user with your user name.
ssh -Y user@acropolis.uchicago.edu
From the command line run the command “x11launcher”. Choose the application you would like to run on the head node or cluster nodes.
Rstudio Server
Rstudio server is available to run in a web browser with in a VNC session. You will need to open a tunnel from your computer to port 8787 in order to access it from a browser on your computer.
Windows
On Windows you will need an SSH client such as Putty.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html
Launch Putty. On the left scroll down to SSH > Tunnels.
Source port: 8787
Destination: localhost:8787
Click Add
On the left scroll up to Session. Enter acropolis.uchicago.edu as the host. You may want to enter a name under Saved Sessions and click Save.
Click Open and log into Acropolis with your CNetID and password.
Open a web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8787.
MacOS\Linux
Open the terminal application.
Copy and paste the following replacing user with your username.
ssh -L 8787:localhost:8787 user@acropolis.uchicago.edu
Once you have established an SSH session to Acropolis open a web browser on your local machine and navigate to http://localhost:8787 .