Troubleshooting Interactive Apps

The window cannot be resized/moved/maximized

While a window manager is not strictly required to be able to set up a desktop/VNC application, one is required to be able to perform many common tasks like moving a window, resizing it, or even locating the window after it has been minimized. The OnDemand team has experience working with XFCE, Mate and Fluxbox (in order of preference). Select one of the window manager / desktop options and ensure that it is installed on the compute nodes.

You will then need to edit $APP/template/script.sh.erb to start the window manager / desktop before the interactive app itself. Examples:

• Use XFCE for the Window Manager

• Use Mate for the Window Manager

• Use Fluxbox for the Window Manager

MATLAB throws Java errors when the window is resized

A remedy for MATLAB throwing Java errors when its window is resized, moved, or displayed on a secondary monitor is detailed in MATLAB’s Known Issues.

Job finishes instantly because, desktop app backgrounds itself

Many apps are convenient in that their launch command blocks instead of backgrounding itself. By blocking the process our script is prevented from ending immediately, which in turn would prevent the user from accomplishing anything useful. Some GUI applications like Stata put themselves into the background. For apps like Stata it is necessary to perform the blocking ourselves:

# Launch Stata GUI
xstata-mp

# Get the PID of the last xstata-mp process started that $USER owns
stata_pid=$( pgrep -u "$USER" 'xstata-mp' | tail )
# As long as the PID directory exists we wait
while [[ -d "/proc/$stata_pid" ]]; do
  sleep 1
done