Sunday, January 29, 2012

Speeding up Matlab over X11 Forwarding

Running Matlab over ssh is handy. If one wants to use the GUI, X11 forwarding is possible, but it is painfully slow if both machines are not inside a local network.

I found information about how to speed it up after googling for a while. In the end I think it is worth it to summarize the steps here:
  • In the current folder where you are going to run matlab from, create a file name java.opts with the content 
                   "-Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false" (without the double commas).
  • Use compression with ssh, by connecting to the server with
                      ssh -c arcfour,blowfish-cbc -Y -C username@server

The speed up obtained is particularly noticeable when changing focus between different windows in the Matlab GUI.
Posted by at
Labels:

17 comments:

  1. TafsleJune 29, 2012 at 12:49 PM

    Made my day! =)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 29, 2012 at 12:51 AM

    Yesss! How great! Finally!
    Thank you so much!

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 23, 2012 at 11:24 AM

    Matlab over SSH was unusable for me before, now its not bad at all. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. TimNovember 2, 2012 at 7:24 AM

    Thanks very much!
    But I think "-c" is only encryption, right?
    Can you comment on the java.opts? What does it tell java?

    ReplyDelete
  5. CjBNovember 2, 2012 at 12:32 PM

    -C is for compression, you can check with 'man ssh'

    about the java option, it is explained here http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/2d/flags.html#pmoffscreen

    it seems to have to do with off-screen rendering, but I haven't looked at the details.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownFebruary 12, 2013 at 10:04 AM

    OMG how fast matlab is compared what is was. Can I marry you?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Amin SadeghiJune 10, 2013 at 2:01 AM

    Thank you so much! This was awesome :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJuly 3, 2013 at 12:11 PM

    Wow. That is not even funny how much the java.ops helps.
    THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousAugust 28, 2013 at 1:21 PM

    Wow, thanks so much.

    ReplyDelete
  10. TafsleApril 15, 2014 at 4:50 PM

    Needed this once again. Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  11. CjBApril 15, 2014 at 5:54 PM

    You're welcome ;)

    ReplyDelete
  12. AnonymousJuly 21, 2014 at 9:27 PM

    thanks! is still not super fast, but so much better! :)

    ReplyDelete
  13. AnonymousJuly 29, 2014 at 6:53 PM

    Can't thank you enough :D

    ReplyDelete
  14. AnonymousOctober 7, 2014 at 1:55 PM

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  15. AnonymousAugust 26, 2016 at 9:24 PM

    Thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  16. AnonymousSeptember 26, 2016 at 4:03 AM

    Makes ssh-Matlab great again o_O. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  17. AnonymousSeptember 23, 2017 at 7:45 PM

    Really useful!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)