Attention

This documentation is under active development, meaning that it can change over time as we refine it. Please email help@massive.org.au if you require assistance.

Troubleshooting Common Issues Using Strudel

I can login to Strudel and launch a desktop but cannot connect. I click the connect button and get an error saying “failed to connect to server”

This can happen if you run the command conda init. This modifies your .bashrc file in your home directory. To see how to resolve this issue, please see the troubleshooting section of our python and conda FAQ. This can also happen with other changes to the .bashrc file, so care has to be taken if you wish to modify the file!

Strudel Web fails to connect to the desktop or Strudel2 crashes when trying to connect to desktop

This is a common result of a full home directory. Strudel uses your home directory to store small temporary files and logs, and if your home directory is full, it can’t do so and fails to start desktops. To resolve this, ssh onto M3 and run the command user_info. This will tell you how much space you’ve used in your home directory:

$ user_info
Home directory usage
+---------------+---------+---------+----------+
| Path          |   Usage |   Quota |   % Used |
|---------------+---------+---------+----------|
| /home/edwardy |   11 GB |   10 GB |    110 % |
+---------------+---------+---------+----------+
Project Usage
+---------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+-----------+--------+
| Name    |   Projects |   Projects |      % |   Scratch |   Scratch |      % |
|         |      Usage |      Quota |   Used |     Usage |     Quota |   Used |
|---------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+-----------+--------|
| nq46    |    1025 GB |   20480 GB |    5 % |   3229 GB |   5120 GB |   63 % |
+---------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+-----------+--------+
Project File Counts
+---------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+-----------+--------+
| Name    |   Projects |   Projects |      % |   Scratch |   Scratch |      % |
|         |      Usage |      Quota |   Used |     Usage |     Quota |   Used |
|---------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+-----------+--------|
| nq46    |    4066671 |            |    N/A |   7861801 |           |    N/A |
+---------+------------+------------+--------+-----------+-----------+--------+

If your home directory is full, you can move files into your project or scratch space, or remove unnecessary files using rm and rm -r for files and directories, respectively. To help you identify which files and folders are occupying the most space, use the command du -sh <directory>/*. For example, du -csh ~/* will show the size of all the files and directories of your home directory.

You should now be able to connect to your desktop successfully.

I can connect to a Desktop, but the display looks messed up, or I can see the display, but cannot interact with the Desktop!

This may be fixed by moving or clearing the hidden directories in your home directory: ~/.cache and ~/.config. To see them, use the ls -a command in your home directory. Try moving them to see if it fixes your desktop display issues by running:

mv ~/.cache ~/.cache.bak
mv ~/.config ~/.config.bak

If this resolves your display issue, you can remove the old directories with the command rm -rf ~/.cache.bak ~/.config.bak.

I’m unable to type certain letters in STRUDEL web desktop

If you are using Safari as your browser, you may find that you cannot enter some keys, such as s, d, e, and f. The solution seems to be to use a different browser, e.g. Chrome or Firefox. See this forum for similar complaints.