remote access | BioInfoExpert

Working remotely (via SSH) poses numerous challenges:

running programs are killed if the session is terminated or connection is lost
you need to open many connections if you want to run more things at the same time
you cannot resume the session from different machine

All above problems have a simple solution in Linux, called screen. Screen provides virtual terminals that can be disconnected & resumed later.

Install screen

sudo apt-get install screen

Prepare configuration file

Below you can find example configuration file. This will enable changing the windows with F5/F6, scrolling and it will display some useful information in the bottom of your screen terminal. To enable it, just paste below text to file: ~/.screenrc

#para tener scroll-back
termcapinfo xterm|xterms|xs|rxvt ti@:te@
defscrollback 5048
##
### detach on hangup
autodetach on
##
### don't display the copyright page
startup_message off
##
### emulate .logout message
pow_detach_msg "Screen session of $LOGNAME $:cr:$:nl:ended."
##
#
# BARRA DE ESTADO v1
#### alternative caption, gives window list, LOGNAME and current date:
caption always "%u%{wk}%?%-Lw%?%{bw}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{wk}%?%+Lw %=  %{mk}host:%H Load:%l  %{ck}%M%{wk} %{ck}%d %{gk}%c"

# BARRA DE ESTADO v2
#hardstatus alwayslastline
#hardstatus string "%{.bW}%-w%{.rW}%n %t%{-}%+w %=%{..G} %H %{..Y} %d/%m %C%a Load: %l"
#caption always "%3n %t%? @%u%?%? [%h]%?"a
#
termcapinfo xterm ti@:te@

defscrollback 1000

# Scroll up
bindkey -d "^[[5S" eval copy "stuff 5\025"
bindkey -m "^[[5S" stuff 5\025

# Scroll down
bindkey -d "^[[5T" eval copy "stuff 5\004"
bindkey -m "^[[5T" stuff 5\004

# Scroll up more
bindkey -d "^[[25S" eval copy "stuff \025"
bindkey -m "^[[25S" stuff \025

# Scroll down more
bindkey -d "^[[25T" eval copy "stuff \004"
bindkey -m "^[[25T" stuff \004


bindkey -k k5 prev # F5 for previous window
bindkey -k k6 next # F6 for next window

Create new virtual terminal

screen -S sessionName
# create new window: Ctlr-A and C
# detach session:    Ctrl-A and D

Reattach to previous session

screen -dr sessionName
# list existing session: screen -dr

# install dependencies sudo apt-get install xutils-dev expect xorg-dev libjpeg8-dev libpng12-dev cups xfonts-base x11-xserver-utils autoconf sudo mkdir -p /usr/NX/{bin,etc} # install freenx wget http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/repo/pkgs/freenx-server/freenx-server-0.7.3.tar.gz/856f597e139018f7ed62713c9d6c9ed5/freenx-server-0.7.3.tar.gz tar xpfvz freenx-server-0.7.3.tar.gz cd freenx-server-0.7.3 patch < gentoo-nomachine.diff make sudo make install # copy node.conf # and replace #COMMAND_MD5SUM="openssl md5" with COMMAND_MD5SUM="md5sum" # and #COMMAND_START_GNOME=gnome-session with COMMAND_START_GNOME="/usr/bin/startlxde" sudo cp node.conf.sample /usr/NX/etc/node.conf # get nx source wget http://code.x2go.org/releases/source/nx-libs/nx-libs_3.5.0.13-full.tar.gz tar xpfvz nx-libs_3.5.0.13-full.tar.gz cd nx-libs_3.5.0.13 # compile & relax for ~1 hour... make build-full sudo make install # copy libs and binaries sudo ln -s /usr/lib/NX3/lib/nx /usr/NX/lib sudo cp -a nx-X11/lib/X11/libNX_X11.so* nx-X11/lib/Xext/libNX_Xext.so* nx-X11/lib/Xrender/libNX_Xrender.so* nxcomp/libXcomp.so* nxcompext/libXcompext.so* nxcompshad/libXcompshad.so* /usr/NX/lib sudo cp -a nx-X11/programs/nxauth/nxauth nx-X11/programs/Xserver/nxagent nxproxy/nxproxy /usr/NX/bin # link binaries & install for f in /usr/bin/nx*; do echo $f; sudo ln -s $f /usr/NX/bin; done sudo nxsetup --install

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