Compute Questions

Software Questions

Data Questions

How Do I Run a Graphical Interface?

If you plan to run Rstudio, MATLAB, SAS or any other Graphical User Interface (GUI), you will need to connect to the Yens with X-forwarding enabled. UIT has a page describing this in more detail, along with information about auxiliary, system-specific software that you will need to have installed before proceeding.

Make sure you have X11 software installed on your local computer first:

  • For Mac OS, you need to have XQuartz installed first. XQuartz usually requires restarting your computer before you can use it.

  • For Windows, you need to have XMing installed first.

Login to Yens with X-forwarding

ssh -Y <SUNet ID>@yen.stanford.edu

The -Y flag here enables X-forwarding, allowing you to run software on the server that uses graphical windows.

When prompted, type your SUNet ID password. Then, complete the two-factor authentication process. After you successfully login, check that X-forwarding works correctly. Choose any of the following commands and type it in the yen command line interface as all of them will pop up a window if everything is working correctly - xeyes, xcalc, xlogo or xclock (or choose your favorite X11 command line program).

xeyes

which will pop up a window with eyes tracking where your mouse is.

Examples

R / RStudio GUI

To run RStudio GUI, load the R module with the version of R that you want:

ml R/4.0.0

List the loaded modules:

module list

Currently Loaded Modules:
  1) rstudio/1.1.463   2) R/4.0.0

We see that RStudio is loaded automatically when you load R module. We can now launch RStudio with:

rstudio

The RStudio GUI will pop open and you can do anything you would normally do in RStudio (but with noticeable delay due to X tunneling):

If you forget to load R module or loaded only the rstudio module, you will see an error that R is not found:

If that happens, just load R module and start RStudio again.

MATLAB

To run MATLAB GUI, load the matlab module with the version that you want:

ml matlab

We can now launch MATLAB GUI with:

matlab

The MATLAB GUI will pop open and you can do anything you would normally do (but with noticeable delay due to X tunneling):

Stata

For the Stata GUI, load the stata module with the version that you want:

ml statamp

We can now launch the Stata GUI with:

xstata-mp

The Stata GUI will pop open and you can do anything you would normally do (but with noticeable delay due to X tunneling).

SAS

To run SAS GUI, load the SAS module:

ml sas

We can now launch SAS GUI with:

sas

The SAS GUI will pop open and you can do anything you would normally do (but with noticeable delay due to X tunneling):