FastX (desktop client) use with engaging

[gvnwst]

I'm attempting to use the FastX client (not web interface) to SSH into the engaging cluster -- mobaXterm is a bit slow for anything with a GUI. I am having issues I have not previously seen with FastX, and which google has not been helpful with.

Summary of questions

• Does the user need to active the FastX server on engaging, prior to use?
• What is the reason for specifically using eofe8 vs. eofe7 in the FastX example?
• Is there any known issue with the FastX desktop client -- or, has the desktop client been successfully used with Engaging?

Description of issue (steps taken to produce)

After generating a public/private key pair with PuttyGen and loading the .ppk private key into pageant, I uploaded the public .pub key to Engaging through the OOD portal and confirmed its presence in my ssh session with mobaxterm.

The FastX connection is set up as follows:

Name: <name>
Host: eofe7.mit.edu
Port: 22
User: <my username>
Path: fastx-protocol

When I attempt to connect to the server I get an error

Failed to get the session list. SSH exited with error code "1"

The details suggest that “error code ‘1’” refers to “ssh keys rejected, no supported authentication methods".

Interestingly, if I change how the public key is entered in the “authorized_keys” file (prepending “ssh-rsa” to the Putty-generated key), engaging-side, I get a different error: “

Failed to get session list. Unable to contact the server. Check that the server is properly installed and that the SCI is accessible to the user.

No changes are made on my end between these two cases, so it’s confusing why it goes from “server rejected keys” to “unable to contact server”. I'm hoping whatever is causing this change is also responsible for having my publickey denied.

This is while attempting to log into eofe7.mit.edu, which is explicitly suggested at the beginning of the README. I also attempted it with eofe8.mit.edu, same behavior.

The given FastX instructions are a little vague, with eofe8 being the URL and a particular port given (and I think have a typo, should be .mit.edu not .mit/edu in the url), so perhaps I'm missing something.
I believe FastX requires the fastX server to be installed -- is there something I have to do to activate it for my user account?

I use FastX routinely for logging into other CentOS/RHEL servers without issue though none which require keys for login.

Thanks.

[jcwright77]

HI, thanks for pointing out the typo.

Is there something wrong with using the fastx web portal? That gives you a full desktop in the browser and should give you the best performance. Just go to either eofe7.mit.edu or eofe8.mit.edu in a browser.

A few points:

1. The fastx server is installed. We are running fastx 2.4.16. You appear to be using fastx3 client?
2. The path to sci for fastx2 is /usr/bin
3. The port for the web portal is 3443. Not sure if you need to use 22 or 3443 for the desktop client. fastx documentation suggests you use 3443.
4. The easiest way to get the desktop client to work is to connect to the webportal. Add a session (+) in upper right corner. Choose web. Name the session. Use eofe8.mit.edu:3443 for the url, add your user name. A popup similar to the web page port will ask you to upload your ssh private key (not ppk) and then you should be able to establish a connection. This option will not require using pagent.

[gvnwst]

Thanks for the point about FastX 2 -- I'd just been using the most recent version available from IS&T. I've now installed FastX 2. Unfortunately it is still not working, see below.

Regarding port/path to sci, what I used there were default settings for FastX 3 on Win10. FastX 2 appears to explicitly ask for Sci, but I have no file/folder bin/sci on windows.

Now using FastX 2 (build 2.4.16) and attempting access through the web portal. I added my (non .ppk) private key, the same one I use with my general ssh-agent. When I attempt to access eofe7.mit.edu I am prompted to login. Entering my password, I get the following message (on the login page):

Agent pid 47560 {"result":{"url":"http://localhost:3000/","token":"a9ad04a8-04d1-45ed-9b73-73b6983bd243"}} 

If I open another tab and try to access eofe7.mit.edu I see the web portal. On attempting to run an XFCE session, I get two errors:

Unable to contact settings server
Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-FhKSNTsLyh: Connection refused

and

Unable to load a failsafe session
Unable to determine failsafe session name. Possible causes:
xfconfd isn't running ( D-Bus setup problem);
environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set incorrectly (must include "/ etc"), or xfce4-session is installed incorrectly.

Google has a couple of hits on these errors, but all with unix solutions --- nothing for Win10. Any other ideas what I could try?