Here are some basic procedures on how to run a GUI program when you SSH into Nicco2 on MacOS.

  1. First install XQuartz (equivalent to Xming).
  2. After the installation of XQuartz has finished, try opening XQuartz. It should look like the image below.

    If it doesn’t look like the image above just go up to the top of the tool bar and click on “Applications” and then “Terminal” to open the terminal window as shown below.

  3. Now connect to a remote server by using the -X option which will do X11 forwarding for SSH.
    Type “ssh -X [your nicco2username]@nicco2.sscnet.ucla.edu” into the XQuartz terminal. You can look at step 4 of this tutorial or the image below for more information about this step.
  4. Now that you have logged in, check the DISPLAY variable to make sure it is correct.
  5. You can now run any GUI interface program. For a quick test, you can type “xclock” and it should display a little clock on your screen.