Hello everyone, I am setting up an interactive desktop and I don't know the steps. Can you help me with what needs to be set up?

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Hello everyone, I am setting up an interactive desktop and I am using Open OnDemand version 4.0.6. I did not configure it successfully according to the official manual. Preparing to configure xfce as an interactive desktop environment, what software packages do I need to install and what files do I need to set up? Do you have detailed steps? thank

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Hi and welcome!

So you need the underlying packages for xfce installed. For example you can dnf groupinstall "Xfce" to get all the packages for it.

Beyond that, you need turboVNC and websockify. You may need to set the WEBSOCKIFY_CMD either through an environment variable or through the cluster.d configuration. I’ve given links for both below.

Many sites install these two through modules, though you may be able to install them through apt or dnf.

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In RHEL9 and derivatives, the dnf groupinstall “xfce” brings in many dependencies that do not seem necessary such as NetworkManager-wifi and gnome-bluetooth (obviously HPC batch nodes do not have wifi and bluetooth) and other things such as xfce4-power-manager which might mess up with the node configuration. Is there a way for one to avoid troubles with those or am I being overly paranoid?

TIA

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Not sure. Maybe a small ansible type role to install only what you need - or maybe puppet to get rid of what you don’t need.

Removing those packages like xfce4-power-manager won’t harm anything. That said I think we still have them on our systems, but the buttons don’t do anything meaningful (some other trap in systemd prevents regular users from doing so, but I’m not aware of what that is as I’m not a sysadmin).

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