X Forwarding with Cygwin

I used the EGSnrc/BEAMnrc/DOSXYZnrc Monte Carlo simulation codes during my doctoral and post-doctoral work at QUT. This involved the use of QUT’s High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities. I’ve previously written about setting up EGSnrc on that system here.

A number of tools written for use with BEAMnrc and DOSXYZnrc only work in a Unix environment, DOSXYZ_SHOW for example, which allows the visualisation of simulation geometries and dose distributions. QUT would provide  (at the time, at least) the X-Win32 software to allow such graphical user interface applications to be viewed remotely from a Windows PC. Here I discuss how I used Cygwin/X for X Forwarding over SSH, for reference.

The first step is to install Cygwin, available here. During the installation you will need to specify that you want the “openssh” and “xinit” packages installed. Once complete, a shortcut to the XWin Server will appear in your start menu. When run, this will open an X terminal on your local PC (like the one seen above). A connection to HPC should be established with:

$ ssh -X user@lyra.qut.edu.au

Once connected, you will be able to run applications will graphical user interfaces, such as DOSXYZ_SHOW.