ChromeOS/Browser

Other OSs: Linux Mac OS Windows Android iOS

These instructions have been tested on Chrome for MacOS but should apply equally to Chrome for Windows and to ChromeOS machines.

These instructions use the Chrome apps Secure Shell and RealVNC's VNC Viewer, which can be downloaded for free from the Chrome webstore. These should run on ChromeOS or as browser apps on MacOS or Windows. More details can be found at the Chromium Git repository for Secure Shell and on the RealVNC website for the VNC Viewer.

Before opening the VNC viewer, you will need to SSH onto remote to start a VNC session on dataview, as described above. To do this open Secure Shell then either fill in you username in the ‘username’ box, remote.naic.edu in the ‘hostname’ box and 22 in the ‘port’ box (this is the standard SSH port). You shouldn't need to fill in any more options, simply hit ‘enter’ or click the ‘[EMTER] Connect’ button to make you SSH connection. You will be prompted for your , once you give this you will be logged onto remote, from where you can logon to dataview to start you VNC session.

Once you have started your VNC session, you can logoff from remote. This should bring up the following dialogue in the SSH terminal window:

Connection to remote.naic.edu closed.
NaCl plugin exited with status code 0.
(R)econnect, (C)hoose another connection, or E(x)it?

If you hit ‘r’, you will return to the remote.naic.edu login screen. If you hit ‘c’ you are returned to the inital screen. If you hit &lsquo'x’, the app simply stops! You should hit ‘c’ to return to the initial screen. This will still have the details you filled in earlier; in order to open the tunnel you need to add the following to the ‘SSH Arguments’ box:

-L 59MM:dataview:59NN

where NN is the VNC display number from above (including a leading 0 if necessary), and MM (again including a leading 0 if necessary) is the local desktop number (59NN is thus the port number on the remove machine, 59MM the port number on the local machine). Note that the -f option used on the Linux and MacOS command lines is not available here.

For example, if vncserver has returned desktop number 48 (as above) on dataview, you could forward that to desktop 1 on your lcal machine using:

-L 5901:dataview:5948

in the ‘SSH Arguments’ box.

As you are making an SSH connection via remote.naic.edu, you will be asked for your password. This is your Arecibo login password, not your VNC password.

You should now open VNC Viewer. This will bring up a screen with an ‘Address’ box, a ‘Picture Quality’ drop-down selector and a ‘Connect’ button. In the ‘Address’ box, you should enter localhost::59MM (where MM is the local display number, e.g. for the example you would enter ,tt>localhost::5901 to connect to port 5901). Note the double colon before the port number. The ‘Picture Quality’ selector can normally be left at ‘Automatic’. You can now click ‘Connect’.

You will receive a warning about an ‘Unencrypted Connection’. As you are only connecting to a screen on localhost – your own machine – there is no danger of anything being intercepted. Information is passed from your local machine to dataview via an encrypted SSH tunnel. You can therefore safely ignore this warning and hit ‘Connect’.

The next window that appears is an ‘Authentication’ window where you should enter your VNC password. Once this is done, you will be connected to your VNC session. A warning about the connection being unencrypted will appear at the top of the screen for about a second, it will then be replaced by a pop-up box near the bottom of the screen advertising that you can get a secure connection with RealVNC's VNC server. This can be safely dismissed.

If your VNC session screen is larger than your display, you can navigate using scrollbars. There is also a small toolbar that appears if you hover the mouse near the centre of the lower side of the screen (there is a dark grey tab there when it is hidden). This toolbar has buttons to pin (or unpin, if it is already pinned) itself, get information on your connection, bring up a virtul keyboard (for access to special keys), bring up the help system, enter (or exit) full screen mode, or disconnect from your session. If you choose to enter full screen mode then you will loose your scrollbars; you can navigate around a larger screen by holding your mouse near the edges of the screen in the direction you wish to slide.