[Paraview] MPI-enabled pvserver using SSH

[KLemmons at beckman.com]

Hello,

I got ParaView 2.6 compiled with MPI enabled, tested it locally (it 
works), and went to test it using a few pvservers on the nodes in my 
cluster, and I see the splash screen, but (paradoxically enough) an 
invisible window is created whose title in the task bar is "unable to open 
display." This happens both physically, from the cluster head node, and 
remotely from our control box (connects to the head node via SSH with 
OpenGL-enabled X-forwarding).  Looking around at archives and searching 
online has only led me to one possible cause, and that is that when the 
pvserver spawns the children servers, they are not able to open an X 
display (for rendering purposes?). If they are looking for an open 
display, they won't find them, because X is not running (but it is 
installed and working) on each of the nodes.  Looking at the output of ps 
aux, I noticed something very interesting:
foobar      3597  0.0  0.2   4440  2216 pts/14   S    14:27   0:00      |  
    \_ /usr/bin/rsh n101 -l foobar -n /usr/local/bin/pvserver cluster 
36515 \-p4amslave \-p4yourname n101 \-p4rmrank 1
...
foobar      3956  0.0  0.2   4440  2216 pts/14   S    14:27   0:00      |  
    \_ /usr/bin/rsh n109 -l foobar -n /usr/local/bin/pvserver cluster 
36515 \-p4amslave \-p4yourname n109 \-p4rmrank 9
This uses RSH, which as far as I know does not do X forwarding.  What 
makes this interesting is that I cannot find this remote shell command 
specified anywhere in the mpirun scripts (they all use SSH by default), 
and this was verified by our MPI hello world program:
foobar     10621  1.2  0.2   4444  2220 pts/14   S    14:29   0:00      |  
    \_ /usr/bin/ssh n101 -l foobar -n /foo/bar/mpi/mpihw cluster 48369 
\-p4amslave \-p4yourname n101 \-p4rmrank 1
...
foobar     10869  2.0  0.2   4440  2216 pts/14   S    14:29   0:00      |  
    \_ /usr/bin/ssh n109 -l foobar -n /foo/bar/mpi/mpihw cluster 48369 
\-p4amslave \-p4yourname n109 \-p4rmrank 9

My thought is that using SSH might allow me to either (a) specify that 
X-forwarding is enabled by default (via the ssh config file) or (b) once I 
figure out how to set it, I can specify "/usr/bin/ssh -X -Y" as the remote 
shell command/options.

I have been unsuccessful in locating where pvserver determines to use rsh 
instead of ssh, as it is not specified (from what I can tell) anywhere in 
the CMake configuration or in the build files, and I cannot find in the 
documentation where this setting might be located.

My questions are as follows:
1. Why is my pvserver trying to use rsh when the default would appear to 
be ssh? Could this cause the problem I am decribing?
2. Are there any other ways for the nodes to connect to a display without 
X-forwarding? (did I misconfigure something?)
3. If it should be using ssh and the reason why it isn't is not obvious 
from my above description, what would the next step be in determining my 
problem?

Thanks,
~Kyle
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