FastX is a remote desktop service developed by StarNet Communications, which allows you to connect from your personal machine to our systems using a normal graphical interface as if you were sitting at a department machine. FastX also has far less network lag than using X forwarding over regular SSH.
Detailed Instructions
- Follow the steps for setting up an ssh keypair. If you are running fastx5 client on Windows, you also needs to run the pageant client from the Putty tool. You will need to convert your id_rsa to putty private key using puttygen i. e. "puttygen id_rsa -o id_rsa.ppk -O private" to use with pagent. On MacOs or linux platform, you will need to run ssh-agent and load your private id_rsa key with ssh-add after running ssh-agent.
- Download and install the FastX 5 desktop client from the Starnet site https://www.starnet.com/download-fastx-client - OIT Endpoint Engineering has a fastx license server to provide client licenses for all of Brown.
- IMPORTANT: We are now running FastX version 5. Do not use the FastX client older than version 5 - the versions are incompatible.
- OSX users - Drag the “FastX” icon into your /Applications directory to make it easier to find and run later.
- 32-bit Linux users - the “Get FastX for Linux” link will download a 64-bit binary. Contact problem@cs.brown.edu for a copy of the 32-bit binary.
- Run FastX. Click the plus sign at the top right to add a new connection configuration. You’ll be presented with two options, “ssh” and “web”. Select “ssh”. Fill out the form with the following information:
- Name = [whatever you want]
- Host = fastx-cluster.cs.brown.edu
- Port = 22 [should be the default]
- User = [your CS username]
- Path = fastx-protocol [should be the default]
- Forward Agent Connections = check this if you are on Windows and running Pageant, otherwise leave unchecked
- Use Plink SSH program = check this box for pagent to work with the ssh connection on Windows
- Click “Save” after entering the above information.
- You might be presented with a warning that “This host is not recognized by the system. Are you sure you want to continue?” Click Continue. This should create a new entry in the list. Double click on that - it should try to connect.
- Enter your key passphrase when prompted. (If you have not previously logged into FastX, ssh, or any lab machine, or if you have recently changed your University password, you will also be prompted for your University password and Duo 2-factor auth.)
- This should open a new window. You are now connected to FastX but have not created a session yet.
- The new window should present you with a few different session options: “GNOME”, “XFCE”, or “XTerm”. If you don’t know what these are, or don't have a preference between desktop environments, pick “XFCE”. Make sure Window mode is “Single”, then click “OK”.
- This should start a session on one of the virtual desktop machines in the FastX cluster, and open a window that looks like a normal desktop session. You might have to resize the window a bit.
Fastx5 Web Interface
With Fastx5, an improve web interface is provided. You can run your fastx session in the browser without using the client. The best browser for this setup is google chrome. You will need to add the fastx exentension to chrome browser. You can get the fastx extension by pointing chrome to the following url:
https://fastx-cluster.cs.brown.edu:3300
You will also need to install the fastx5 client with chrome fastx extension and putty pagent on Windows. Firefox need fastx4 client to work with fastx extension and pagent. Some library from the fastx client is needed for the web interface to work correctly with crome and firefox. On MacOs and linux, you would use ssh-agent and ssh-add in place of pagent. The web interface use your private from the pagent or ssh-agent to authenticate. You must have set up a public key with the CS department through the SSH Key portal.
Other Issues
If you have any issues not covered here, contact someone on the technical staff for help.
