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Re: Mathematica 7.0.0 and X11 forwarding over SSH

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg96149] Re: Mathematica 7.0.0 and X11 forwarding over SSH
  • From: Albert Retey <awnl at gmx-topmail.de>
  • Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 03:50:13 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <gmgusc$2vp$1@smc.vnet.net>

Hi,

> I have installed a single license Mathematica 7.0.0 on an 
> OpenSuse 10.3 64bit-machine. Kernel is 2.6.22.19-0.2-default #1 SMP.
> When working with the frontend at this machine locally, everything 
> seems to be fine. However when I login from remote via "ssh -X" and
> then start Mathematica, the frontend is awfully slow when I try to
> type something or when using backspace. The delays are so bad that
> working is not possible. I tried logging in from computers running
> OpenSuse 10.3, 11.0 and 11.1, always with the same result. Finally
> I logged in from remote onto an Ubuntu machine which is running
> kernel 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP and also has Mathematica 7.0.0
> installed. This also shows the same issue.

I have no access to machines to try out what you are describing, but to
me it does not come as a surprise that running the FrontEnd over the
network is not fast, especially since you are tunneling through ssh. Do
you have experience with other programs and older versions of
Mathematica that suggest this should work with reasonable reactivity? Of
course it depends also on your network connection and the speed of both
computers, which have to encrypt/decrypt the data interchanged between
the X-Server and the X-Client. If you are reasonable sure that your
connection should be fast enough (bandwidth AND latency) and older
versions of Mathematica run alright, then you probably should contact
Wolframs support.

Something else you could try is to start the FrontEnd locally and
connect to a remote kernel instead of using X over an ssh-tunnel, but I
don't know whether that will be a solution for your problem.

Last but not least you could run vncserver on the remote machine and
connect with a vncviewer on the local machine. You should find
information on the internet of how to set this up. I found this to work
much better than X over ssh on slow connections and it has other
benefits, too. E.g. you can disconnect while a long calculation runs etc.


hth,

albert


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