Using FastX with the Stern Slurm cluster provides fast and efficient remote access to graphical applications such as R-Studio, MATLAB, xStata, SAS, and more. In this tutorial, you will use GNOME Terminal in FastX to open a Terminal, and then use that to open RStudio.
Accessing FastX
You will login with your Stern account. If you are not on campus, make sure you are logged in to the NYU VPN and then you have two options.
- Login directly into one of the FastX session nodes.
- Login remotely to a physical machine in your office at NYU and then into one of the FastX session nodes (better performance)
These are the available FastX session nodes.
https://fx1.scrc.nyu.edu:3300
https://fx2.scrc.nyu.edu:3300
https://fx3.scrc.nyu.edu:3300
Next, you will see the following login page:

Log in using your Stern credentials. Visit Getting An Account if you need help with setting up your account. Once logged in, you will see the FastX home page.

This is where you will start, terminate and manage your sessions. To start a New Session, click on the GNOME Terminal application on the left.

This will launch a new Terminal session. Before you are taken to the session, you will have the option to choose how you want to connect to the session:

You have two options:
- Connect using Browser client: Use your session in a browser window. See the section Using FastX in a Browser below.
- Connect using the Desktop client: To use the client, download and install it from Download the FastX Client. We recommend using FastX Client for a smoother experience.
There are two options for using the FastX Client.
Connecting with the FastX Client: Option 1
If you select the Desktop Client, a Gnome terminal window opens.

Next, see Using Modules with FastX. For a specific program example see Run XStata on SLURM.
Connecting with the FastX Client: Option 2
You can start the FastX client directly. Find and start the installed FastX client program on your local machine. You should see a Connections window.

Next, to create a new connection click the “+” icon and login to one of the fx session nodes, e.g.,
- Host: fx1.scrc.nyu.edu (or fx2 or fx3)
- User: <Your Stern NetID>
- Port: 22
- Name: (can be anything you want)

To create a new connection, press the “+” icon to create a new connection. Enter the following details:
- Host: fx1.scrc.nyu.edu (or fx2 or fx3)
- User: <Your Stern NetID>
- Port: 22
- Name: (can be anything you want)
Next, you see a window with the connection to the fx node.

The connection is not active until you double-click it and enter your Stern password. Once active the session window looks similar to

Click the “+” icon to show the application window.

Double-click the GNOME Terminal application to start a terminal session.

Next, see Using Modules with FastX. For a specific program example see Run XStata on SLURM.
Using FastX in a Browser
If you chose to connect to a session with the Browser Client, a terminal session will open in a new tab in your browser.
Double-click the GNOME Terminal application to start a terminal session.

Next, see the next section Using Modules with FastX. For a specific program example see Run XStata on SLURM.
Using Modules with FastX
Once you have the Terminal open on one of the FastX nodes, to list the available software, type:
module avail
This brings up a list of all installed modules on the fx login node

Note that on the fx login node, you are limited to a few basic applications. This node is not intended for computational tasks.
Logging in to an interactive node
To run interactive jobs, we have to use the srun
command to log in to an interactive job node. You can see what nodes are available using sinfo
:

srun --pty --mem=8gb --time=1:00:00 --cpus-per-task=1 --nodes=1 /bin/bash
srun
: Command to submit a job to the Slurm scheduler.--pty
: Allocate a pseudo-terminal for interactive job execution.--mem=8gb
: Request 8 gigabytes of memory for the job.--time=1:00:00
: Set a time limit of 1 hour for the job’s execution.--cpus-per-task=1
: Request 1 CPU core per task.--nodes=1
: Request 1 compute node for the job.--partition=gpu
: Request a node with gpus. (optional)--partition=bigmem
: Request a node with a lot of RAM. (optional)/bin/bash
: Execute the Bash shell as the job’s command.
You will see that you are logged in to one of the interactive nodes.

Use module avail
here to see available software packages:

Loading a module
To load RStudio, type in the following command:
module load R/4.0.2
Now run the following command to open RStudio:
rstudio
You should see an RStudio window open up.
