Research Desktop (RED) usage policies and interface features

On this page:

ThinLinc Client lets you disconnect your RED session without terminating it; this keeps your session and any open applications running, allowing work to proceed while you are disconnected.

Disconnected sessions are terminated after seven days of inactivity.

Only one RED session is allowed per user. When you connect, if you have no disconnected sessions running, ThinLinc Client automatically creates a new session. If you do have an existing session, you are automatically reconnected to that session. However, if you want a new session rather than your existing one, select End existing session before connecting; the existing session will be terminated and a new one created.

The scheduled monthly maintenance window for IU's high performance computing systems is the second Sunday of each month, 7am-7pm.

IU recommends saving your work and logging out before 7am on maintenance days. All sessions still open at 7am on maintenance day will be terminated.

When you connect to RED, the following icons appear by default on the remote desktop:

• Disconnect ThinLinc Session: Double-click to close RED without terminating your remote session. This allows you to reconnect to the same session at a later time.
• Log Out: Double-click to close RED and terminate your remote session. (For more, see the Logging out versus disconnecting your session section of Download, install, and configure ThinLinc Client to use Research Desktop (RED) at IU.)
• Trash: Delete items by dragging and dropping them to Trash.
  Note:

  Items placed in Trash will continue to count toward your research computing storage quota until you permanently delete them. To view items in Trash, double-click Trash. To permanently delete all items, click Empty Trash, and then click Empty Trash again to confirm; to delete an individual item, right-click (or Ctrl-click) the item, select Delete Permanently, and then click Delete to confirm.
• Home: Double-click to access your Quartz home directory. (When you're logged in, the Home icon's label will include your IU username.)
• BR200 Login: Double-click to access options for logging into your Big Red 200 account.
• Interactive Job: Double-click to open an interactive session on one of the compute nodes on Quartz. This opens a Terminal window and submits an interactive job request for four hours of wall time using eight cores and 32 GB of a single compute node. These jobs normally start within two or three minutes. When your job is ready, you will be placed at the compute node's command prompt.
  Note:

  • The Interactive Job shortcut is intended as a convenient way to log into a Quartz compute node. If you need more time, cores, or memory, use srun in a Terminal window to request the resources that you need. For more about submitting interactive jobs, see Use Slurm to submit and manage jobs on IU's research computing systems.
  • If your job does not start after two or three minutes, or if you need help using this tool, use this form to contact the RED development team directly.
• Slate Scratch: Double-click to access files in your Slate-Scratch space.
• thindrives: Double-click to access drives and directories on (or connected to) your personal computer.
  Note:

  To enable thindrives access to drives and directories on your personal computer, before connecting to a new session you must configure the ThinLinc Client's "Export Local Resources" option.
• RED Documentation: Double-click to access RED support documentation.
• Feedback and Questions: Double-click to open a window that will let you send feedback and questions to the Research Desktop team.
• Terminal: Double-click to open a Terminal window that logs you in automatically on the same node that is serving your RED session.

The RED pop-up menu lets you change your screen size settings, toggle full-screen view on and off, and access other connection settings during your RED session:

To access the pop-up menu, press F8. (Depending on your local system, you may need to press Fn-F8 or Win-F8.)

To map the pop-up menu to another key:

• Before opening a session: In the ThinLinc Client login window, click Options to open the "ThinLinc Client Options" window. On the Options tab, under "Session Options", make sure Send system keys is selected, use the Popup menu key selector to assign another key, and then click OK to return to the login window.
• During your session: Open the pop-up menu, click Options, and then, on the Options tab, make sure Send system keys is selected. Use the Popup menu key selector to assign another key, and then click OK.

To disable the pop-up menu, do the same as above, but set the Popup menu key selector to None.

At the top of the screen, you can use the RED menu bar to launch installed applications, access local and remote resources, and set personal preferences.

• Click Applications to browse and run installed software in several categories:
  • Analytics: Jupyter Notebook, Mathematica, MATLAB, RStudio, SAS, SAS Setup, SPSS, Stata
  • Coding and Editing: Arm Forge, Emacs, Geany, gedit, Pluma, Spyder, VS Code
  • Compute jobs: Interactive job, Quartz Job Manager, Slurm Info
  • Storage: Globus, Scholarly Data Archive (FileZilla), SDA on Globus
  • Utilities: File Browser, FileZilla, Firefox, MATE System Monitor, MATE Terminal, Spreadsheets, Take Screenshot, VLC Media Player
  • Visualization: Chimera, DSI Studio, Fiji, FSLeyes, Integrative Genomics Viewer, Metashape, ParaView, QGIS, VMD
  • IU HPC Slack Channel: Opens a Firefox browser tab to the IU HPC Slack Channel where the IU HPC user community can chat and communicate with one another and Research Technologies staff.
• Click Places to access local and remote folders, browse bookmarked and local network locations, search for files, or connect to remote computers or shared disks.
• Click System to access the Preferences menu, which includes several options for changing the appearance and behavior of your desktop.
• Click the Caja icon () to access your Quartz home directory and browse the file system.
• Click the Terminal icon () to open a Terminal window that logs you in automatically on the same node that is serving your RED session.
• Click the Firefox icon () to open the Firefox web browser.

To customize your desktop, right-click (Windows) or Ctrl-click (Mac) on any part of the desktop or menu bar.

If you have an account on the Scholarly Data Archive (SDA) or on Slate, you can access it from RED:

• SDA: From the RED menu bar, select Applications > Storage, and then choose how you want to connect:
  • Select Scholarly Data Archive (Filezilla) to open a virtual FileZilla window; when prompted, enter your IU passphrase to connect to your SDA account.
    Note:

    For SFTP connections to the SDA, RED uses a managed version of FileZilla that is safe to use; later versions of FileZilla have been identified as malware. If the FileZilla "Check for updates" window opens, click Close to close it and continue with your SDA session.
  • Select SDA on Globus to log into your SDA account via the IU Globus Web App.
• Slate: On the RED desktop, double-click your Home icon, and then:
  1. In the file browser window, above the right pane, to the left of "Location", click the Toggle between button and text-based location bar icon to switch to the text-based location bar. The "Location" field should display your current location in the file system as /N/u/username/Quartz (where username is your IU username).
  2. In the "Location" text field, select and delete the displayed path, and then enter the path to your Slate account; for example (replace username with your IU username):

     /N/slate/username

  3. Press Enter or Return.

  Optionally, you can bookmark your Slate account. In the file browser menu, click Bookmarks, and then select Add Bookmark. A persistent link to your Slate account will be added to the Places list (under "Bookmarks") on the left side of the file browser.

To customize the appearance of the RED interface, use the Appearance Preferences utility:

1. From the RED menu bar, select System > Preferences > Look and Feel > Appearance.
2. In the "Appearance Preferences" window, use the Theme, Background, Fonts, and Interface tabs to configure a personalized look and feel for the RED interface.
   Note:

   The available pre-set window and folder themes can be modified by selecting Customize, allowing you to specify your own color scheme, window appearance, icon appearance, icon style, and more.

To view current system status data, use the System Monitor utility:

1. From the RED menu bar, select Applications > Utilities > MATE System Monitor.
2. To view memory and CPU consumption for your processes and applications, select the Processes tab. By default, only your processes are displayed; to see processes besides your own, in the top right, click the menu icon (next to the search icon), and then select Active Processes or All Processes:

   

3. To add or remove information fields, in System Monitor menu, select Edit > Preferences, and then use the checkboxes to select the fields to display.

ThinLinc Client supports the following languages:

• Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR)
• English (en_US)
• Dutch (nl_NL)
• French (fr_FR)
• German (de_DE)
• Italian (it_IT)
• Russian (ru_RU)
• Spanish (es_ES)
• Swedish (sv_SE)
• Turkish (tr_TR)

To change your keyboard layout, inside your RED session:

1. From the RED menu bar, select System > Preferences > Hardware > Keyboard.
2. In the "Keyboard Preferences" window, on the Layouts tab, click Add.
3. In the "Choose a Layout" window, on the By country or By language tab, use the drop-down lists to select a keyboard variant by country or language, and then click Add.

If you are using Research Desktop (RED) and need help or have questions, use this form to contact the Research Desktop development team directly.