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Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics


Charles University, Czech Republic
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics

ÚFAL
Milan Fučík

Virtual Office portal

Purpose: 

  • support Home/Remote office access to UFAL's internal resources
  • provide persistent personal desktop available from multiplatform environment

Virtual Office Portal address: vdesk.ufal.mff.cuni.cz

Protocol: ssh/X2Go

Users: all UFAL's linux network users (active UFAL's linux desktop account required)

Specification/architecture/rules:

  • user may have assigned virtualized personal linux desktop instance
  • instances are running on top of Proxmox cloud called VOFFICE
  • virtual desktops are named vdesk[number].ufal.hide.ms.mff.cuni.cz
  • standard instance has 4-cpu cores, 30GB of RAM, 100GB SSD, 1Gbps LAN, LXDE desktop environment
  • provides the same services as any UFAL's linux desktop (LustreFS shares, shared HOME, the same apps)
  • the instance should be dedicated to only one person or used by more people who are avare of this fact
  • user should never use other vdesk instance then the one assigned by UFAL IT dpt
  • unused VDESK instances needs to be released to be prepared for new applicants

Guideline (what to do if I need to get VDESK instance assigned):

  1. contact IT dpt. and ask if there are VDESK instances available
  2. you'll receive personal VDESK ID, which can be translated into a port number
  3. you can connect to your VDESK system by ssh over this port number
  4. you can connect to your VDESK system by X2Go to get full graphical desktop (it's possible to disconnect and reconnect to a running X2Go session later)
  5. X2Go clients are available at https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/download:start
  6. Your UFAL's linux desktop credentials are required to login to the VDESK system

Example:

 IT dpt. assigned to you system vdesk51.ufal.hide.ms.mff.cuni.cz. Port access number (port-forwarded ssh) is: 2200+IDnumber=2251

 You can access your VDESK system in several ways (you need DNS servers from MS to translate *.hide.ms.mff.cuni.cz):

  1. use UFAL's VPN and open ssh session: ssh user@vdesk51.ufal.hide.ms.mff.cuni.cz
  2. use UFAL's VPN and open X2Go session with selected LXDE desktop environment on vdesk51.ufal.hide.ms.mff.cuni.cz
  3. use port-forwarding: ssh user@vdesk.ufal.mff.cuni.cz -p 2251
  4. use port-forwarding and open X2Go session with selected LXDE desktop environment on vdesk.ufal.mff.cuni.cz and port 2251

Notes:

 It has some limitations like only several environments works fine (LXDE looks to be running correctly) and you need to use different web browser profile in case of a concurrent sessions on desktop and X2Go (shared home).