1.2. Fetdatorn

Fetdatorn is the name of the computer we use to run most shared software solutions. On this page you'll find everything related to it.

Guides

Accessing from the inside

As long as you're on campus you should be able to connect to Fetdatorn without problem, see this.

Accessing from the outside

Since the university offers a way to access their network through a VPN it's also possible to access Fetdatorn remotely. You'll need two things for this:

1. Two-factor authentication enabled on your school account,
2. and be connected to the student VPN.

You can then SSH to Fetdatorn using ssh.edu.liu.se as the jump host, see this. This is guaranteed to always work. If, for some reason, you can't access the LiU VPN then check this.

Connecting to it with ThinLinc

To access Fetdatorn with ThinLinc you'll have to do it like this. Basically you set it up and connect to Fetdatorn's IP and it should work. For details about thinlinc, check this.

OBS! If you have an active ThinLinc session you won't be able to login to Fetdatorn physically, first logout from ThinLinc.

X11 Forwarding on Windows

This is for running GUI applications on Fetdatorn remotely. Please update this guide with the necessary steps if you encounter any problems

Installing a XServer

To run GUI applications on Fetdatorn remotely on your own computer a XServer needs to be set up. Multiple such XServer applications exist, but simplest is installing GWSL. This can be done by either:

• A) Downloading the GWSL.zip file from here GWSL.zip and running the executable GWSL (Version 1.4.0).
• B) Building the latest version from source from their github repo.
  1. Download the latest release .zip file.
  2. Extract all the files to a suitable location.
  3. Open Git Bash (or similar terminal, this guide is based on running the commands in Git Bash).
  4. Create a python venv in the extracted directory: python -m venv gwsl_installation
  5. Source the venv: source gwsl_installation/Scripts/activate
  6. Install all the required packages according to the list on the GitHub. IMPORTANT: Install the lastest version of pyinstaller (remove “==3.5”)
  7. Run the command: python build.py
  8. Start GWSL by running the GWSL.exe file in the dist/GWSL_version directory.
  9. It will ask for access to the firewall and such, press “Allow” on all of them.

SSH to Fetdatorn

1. Create (or update) your .ssh/config file (the standard directory location) according to one of these (see more instructions above how to actually access the computer from inside/outside).
2. Open a Git Bash terminal and set the DISPLAY environment variable to the one used by GWSL. To check this do the following:
   • a. Press the little upwards pointing arrow in the bottom right corner of your screen
     
   • b. Click the icon with the two orange/yellow boxes.
     
   • c. At the top it says what DISPLAY the XServer is running on, in this case it is “localhost:0.0”
3. Run the command: export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
4. Now SSH to fetdatorn, run the command: ssh <Host> (depending on which config you chose).
5. You’re in!
6. Try running xeyes in the terminal. If everything works you should have a pair of eyes on your local machine following your mouse cursor.