[Paraview] paraview - client-server

[pat marion]

I think the technique Burlen described takes advantages of the interactive
queues.

Here is another type of situation that uses the batch queue instead- user
opens paraview on their workstation, submits a job to the cluster, then
waits for the pvserver job to start and reverse connect to the client.

You mentioned generating MOAB job scripts on the fly through a pv xml input
dialog.  All you would need to do would be add some extra code to your job
script template.  The extra code would generate a portfwd config file with a
port chosen by the user.  The user would have to pick a port number other
than 11111, a random port that hopefully is not in use.  When the start
server button is clicked on the client it could run a custom command that
ssh's to a login node, starts portfwd with the custom config file, and
submits the MOAB script.  Now the user just waits to pvserver to connect
back to the login node which is forwarded straight to the workstation.  If
the compute node can't connect to the login node by name (`hostname`) you
can use /sbin/ifconfig to figure out the exact IP.

I can't think of an elegant way to kill portfwd when the session is over,
but you can probably come up with something.  Sorry I can't offer any
specific details.  You might want to read this wiki page too, it describes
such a system in use:

https://visualization.hpc.mil/wiki/ParaView_Client-Server_on_Crays

Goodluck!

Pat

On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 3:05 PM, burlen <burlen.loring at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have used ssh for this on such systems. As long as the batch system gives
> you exclusive use of the set of compute nodes(usually the case), you
> shouldn't have to worry about ports being used by others because the tunnel
> is through your ssh connection. It's not automated though. Here is how I do
> it:
>
> I use two terminals on my workstation, in the following denoted by t1$ and
> t2$, say fe is the front end on your cluster. In the first terminal:
>
>   t1$ ssh fe
>   t1$ qsub -I -V -l select=XX -l walltime=XX:XX:XX
>
>
> XX is replaced by your values. The job starts and you're automatically
> ssh'd into some compute node, which we'll say has hostname NODE. In the
> second terminal:
>
>   t2$ ssh fe
>   t2$ ~C<enter>
>   -L ZZZZZ:NODE:YYYYY
>
>
> The ~C bit is an escape sequence that sets up the port forward. ZZZZZ is a
> port number on your workstation. YYYYY is a port number on the server that
> is not blocked by the clusters internal firewall (see your sys admin). Now
> back to terminal one, and your waiting compute node:
>
>   t1$ module load PV3-modulefile
>   t1$ mpiexec pvserver --server-port=YYYYY
>
>
> The module is what sets up the ld library path and paths for your ParaView
> server install (see your sys admin). now paraview is running on the cluster.
> You start the ParaView client locally and connect over port ZZZZZ on
> localhost.
>
>
> That's what I do, if you come up with some automated script though that
> would be killer.
> Burlen
>
>
>
>
> Bart Janssens wrote:
>
>> On Thursday 04 February 2010 07:59:46 pm Rakesh Hammond wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I am no expert on this type of stuff, but I can see how this would work
>>> - the question is if you have multiple users connecting at the same
>>> time, obviously you can't forward everything into 11111 for example.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Hi Rakesh,
>>
>> If you use reverse connections, the compute nodes only need to be able to
>> connect to outside machines (i.e. the workstations). Turning on NAT on a
>> gateway machine, i.e. the frontend, should be sufficient for that, and no
>> port forwarding is needed. This works on a standard Rocks setup, which
>> enables the frontend as gateway by default.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Bart
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