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A remote connection working to display images from the glxgears or xeyes commands run on the linux host forwarded to your local machine does not mean Freeview graphics will do the same.  If Freeview still displays an empty or black screen, then there could be issues with OpenGL graphics running on or being sent from the linux host.   The system requirements for Freesurfer include the following for running Freeview,

Graphics card: 3D graphics card with its own graphics memory & accelerated OpenGL drivers

Updating the OpenGL drivers on the linux host will sometimes enable Freeview to display images remotely.  My understanding is Linux servers need Mesa packages installed to support newer versions of OpenGL.  If the Freesurfer Debian or RPM package installer was used to install the Freesurfer distribution on the Linux host, then at least some of those packages should now be installed, i.e., we do not recommend using the tar archive to “install” Freesurfer.  We don’t know how EXPANSE installs/maintains Freesurfer or what their servers support for graphics hardware.

GLX is the X-windows extension for OpenGL graphics that can be tunneled thru a remote SSH connection.  But GLX may not work with the newer versions of OpenGL over ssh.  A workaround for this is to install and use VirtualGL on the Linux host.  If VirtualGL is supported/installed on EXPANSE, try prefacing the freeview command with “vglrun” - see MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "secure-web.cisco.com" claiming to be https://www.starnet.com/help/virtualgl.  We use VirtualGL and graphics acceleration on a few Linux workstations to accommodate Freeview running on Linux and viewing its 3D graphics thru a remote VPN connection.

XQuartz on the Mac is the equivalent of X-Windows on Linux.   The Mac should be using Xquartz 2.8.2 or newer for use with the Freesurtfer 7.4.X releases.  I think X-Quartz will open automatically to view X-Windows based graphics on the Mac.

If the EXPANSE linux machines are setup to support remote connections to view 3D X-windows graphics then the IT support staff will know about the options above.  File/open a ticket with them, ask them what they support, and how to setup your environment.  If they do not support it, an alternative is to install Freesurfer on your Mac and download/copy over the data to view with Freeview.

- R.

On Jan 11, 2024, at 14:18, Dong, Yilei <yid025@health.ucsd.edu> wrote:

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Hi Freesurfer team, 

I have Freesurfer installed on UCSD's Expanse HPC, which uses the Rocky Linux 8 operating system. Whenever we try to do ssh tunneling and more specifically, logging into our HPC via ssh -X to open up Freeview's GUI, it always aborts. Prior to logging into my HPC from my Mac laptop's terminal, I always open up XQuartz. Another colleague of mine has also encountered similar issues, where they have managed to get X11 and Xeyes to run, but also Freeview's window keeps aborting. 

We have also tried to follow instructions from the following links when it comes to getting ssh tunneling to work correctly in hopes of making Freeview's GUI pop up: 
MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "secure-web.cisco.com" claiming to behttps://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/martinos/userInfo/computer/remoteAccess.php#graphics
MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "secure-web.cisco.com" claiming to be https://surfer..nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/fswiki/RemoteAccess. 

If we operate from a Mac computer, is it better to use a VNC or XQuartz for ssh tunneling? In addition, can we find an error log in Freesurfer's directory to find out exactly why Freeview keeps aborting in our circumstance?

Thank you. 

Sincerely,
Yilei 

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