ARL DSRC Sci-Vis: Using EnSight in a mixed (ARL.MIL and ARL.HPC.MIL) Kerberos Environment

Scientific Visualization

Using EnSight in a mixed (ARL.MIL and ARL.HPC.MIL) Kerberos Environment

In general, Ensight will be installed in /usr/cta/CEI on all systems, including DSRC VIS & HPC (arl.hpc.mil) systems and the non-DSRC (arl.army.mil) systems. However, the actual install location on your ARL.MIL system may be different, and you should consult your system administrator for additional guidance.

Here is some code to put into the .cshrc on all systems running Ensight:

if (-e /usr/cta/CEI) then
  setenv CEI_HOME /usr/cta/CEI
  set path=($path $CEI_HOME/bin)
endif

There are numerous values you can enter for "CEI_ARCH". The actual values can be found in $CEI_HOME/ensight8/machines. These architectures will be machine and operating system specific, so carefully choose this value depending on which system you'll be running the Ensight Client and Server. Note that you may run the client and servers on different architectures, that is, the server may run on the IBM, and the client can run on an SGI.

OK - that was the easy part - now it gets a little bit complicated, depending on how you want to use Ensight and where your data lives. It's really not so bad once you get things set up properly - the most important is that you must be aware of your kerberos environment.

1. Local Client and Server - Easiest scenario

If the data lives on your local workstation, and it is a relatively small dataset, you run both the client and server on your workstation:

ensight8.client -c localhost

This starts up the ensight client, and also starts a server process running on your local machine.

2. Remote Server

If your data lives on an ARL.HPC.MIL machine and your client is an running on an ARL.MIL machine, and you are going to want to run an ensight server on that remote machine and leave the data in place.

Solution #1 - Automatic Connection
Make sure you have kerberos tickets for the ARL.HPC.MIL realm - kinit username@ARL.HPC.MIL

Verify your tickets: klist
On your ARL.MIL workstation, run the command:
ensight8.client -rsh krsh -c hostname.arl.hpc.mil
        
This will connect you (using a KERBEROS rsh command) to the remote machine and fire up server.

You must have your ensight environment set up properly in your .cshrc on the remote node (see above).

You can debug this process by verifying that you can krlogin between the arl.army.mil workstation and the arl.hpc.mil server.

There are many additional command line options available for the ensight client. Issue the command ensight8 -help for additional command line options.
Solution #2 - Manual Connection
Make sure you have kerberos tickets for the ARL.HPC.MIL realm - kinit username@ARL.HPC.MIL

Verify your tickets: klist
On your ARL.MIL workstation, run the command:
ensight8.client -cm
        
The -cm flag tells ensight to fire up a client, and sit and wait for a connection from server. It will not try to automatically start up a server, it will just sit there and wait.
Log into the remove machine, using whatever method you normally use (for example):
xterm -e krlogin hostname.arl.hpc.mil
        
Start up the server using the command:
ensight8.server -c your-workstation.arl.army.mil
        