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Open OnDemand Interface Guide

Open OnDemand is an intuitive, innovative, and interactive interface to remote computing resources. The key benefit for SCINet users is that they can use any web browser, including browsers on a mobile phone, to access Ceres.

There are several interactive apps that can be run in Open OnDemand including Jupyter, RStudio Server, Geneious, CLC Genomics Workbench, and more. The desktop app allows a user to run any GUI software.

If you are using Atlas Open OnDemand, visit the Atlas Open OnDemand Guide for more information.

To access Open OnDemand on the Ceres cluster, go to Ceres OpenOndemand


Access

If you have a LincPass or YubiKey, follow the GUI login instructions. Otherwise, enter your SCINet username and then your combined password and Google Authenticator code. If your password were password and your code were 123456, your entry for this field would be:

password123456

Using OOD

screenshot of Open OnDemand Ceres Dropdowns Banner

Shell Access

To open a shell, select the Clusters dropdown menu and choose >_Ceres Shell Access. This will open a new tab with an interactive console session on the login node.

Files

Open OnDemand includes a file manager. To open it, select the Files dropdown menu and choose the desired directory. Files can be uploaded, downloaded, viewed, and edited all from the web browser.

Launching Interactive Apps

Several interactive apps are available on Open Ondemand, and more can be added later.

To launch an interactive app, select the Interactive Apps dropdown menu and choose the desired app. It will open the My Interactive Sessions page where settings for app can be selected such as the partition or app version to run. screenshot of Open OnDemand Ceres interactive apps configuration page After selections have been made, pressing Launch will submit an interactive job. This job will be displayed as the topmost entry in the My Interactive Sessions page. The bottom of the intaractive app’s job information card will display text saying the job is starting or, if it has already started, “Connect to Interactive App Name.” Press the Connect button to launch the app in a new tab. screenshot of Open OnDemand Ceres interactive apps job card with connect to button highlighted

Logging Out

To log out of Ceres Open OnDemand, click the Log Out button.

Using Clipboard to Copy/Paste Data

While Open OnDemand(OOD) v 3.0.x does do copy/paste with chrome browser, there is no official support for it. There is a very high likelihood that this “feature” will break due to it being unsupported on noVNC.

The only supported way to copy/paste on noVNC is via the clipboard feature. This will work regardless of the browser you are using.

Remote -> Local

  • From a Desktop/CLC session, copy the contents you need

  • In this example, I am copying the contents from a Desktop OOD session to a text editor on my local machine

  • Select the text you need and right-click to Copy (as seen in image below)

screenshot of first step to copy/paste

  • To sanitize the text prior to copying, you can use Mousepad text editor(Application -> Accessories -> Mousepad)

screenshot of selecting mousepad application

  • Use Mousepad to copy all the text you need, this way you can copy the text in one step.

  • From Mousepad, select the text, right-click and copy.

  • noVNC has a control bar that includes a clipboard, to access it, click on the tab at the center on the left of the window.

screenshot of selecting novnc control bar

  • Click to tab to show and then select the clipboard icon.

screenshot of selecting clipboard icon

  • The clipboard will have the text in your buffer.

screenshot of buffer

  • The text from the noVNC clipboard is like any text in your browser, you can copy the text from here and then paste it in your local machine.

screenshot of copying buffer

screenshot of pasting buffer

  • For quick copy/paste you can have the clipboard open and then select the text you need and it will be instantly displayed in the clipboard buffer

Local Machine -> Remote

  • Copy the text you need from your local machine and then paste into the noVNC clipboard

  • Once in the clipboard buffer, it can be pasted into the text editor/application on the remote session.

screenshot of pasting buffer


Interactive Applications

These are some of the applications that are available on Open OnDemand:

  • Jupyter

    Jupyter is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides an interactive and collaborative environment for scientific computing. This interactive coding environment allows for immediate execution and visualization of code, facilitating on-the-fly data analysis and visualization. It supports over 40 programming languages (including Python, R, Julia, Java, and Scala) and seamlessly integrates with popular data science libraries.

  • RStudio Server

    RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) for the R programming language, with limited support for other programming languages (including Python, bash, and SQL).

  • Geneious

    Geneious Software Use Guide
  • CLC Genomics Workbench

    Before You Begin, email scinet_vrsc@USDA.GOV so that the admins can setup the import/export directories and permissions for access.