FastX is a modern solution for displaying remote linux apps on your desktop or laptop.
You can connect from offsite (non-SLAC network).
The SLAC FastX production service, which is now available, is implemented on a cluster of VMs for redundancy, performance, and horizontal scale-out capability.
Connecting to FastX
Installing the FastX client on your computer is optional.
The easiest way to use FastX is through the browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, IE 10+ are all supported).
- Go to this URL:
https://fastx.slac.stanford.edu:3443
- Log Log in with your SLAC Unix username and password.
- Ignore the Public Key Authentication option – that will not work well since it will not give you an AFS token.
To start a new session, click on the plus box:
Inside the command box, type a ssh command like this:the following.
xterm -e ssh rhel6-64.slac.stanford.edu
You can replace rhel6-64 with the hostname of your own group's interactive login machine if you have one.
When your xterm session starts, you may wish to start a lightweight window manager so you can resize and move windows around inside your browser window:
Type To do that, type these two commands inside your xterm window:
twm &
xsetroot -solid greyThe xsetroot command just makes your desktop background a more pleasing color.
Now you can start your linux application X applications by typing the command commands inside your xterm window.
For example:
gimp &
firefox &
Using the Client application
If you previously downloaded a FastX desktop client, please delete it and download the latest version using these instructions:
- Go to It is available for download at this URL:
Click on the link that says:
Looking for the desktop client?After you download and start the desktop client, click the + (plus) icon to configure a new session.
Select "Web" when given the choices of Web or SSH.
A "Web" session is required for the clustering configuration to work, and also to restore a browser session you already started. If you select SSH instead of Web, then you may not see all your available sessions – you may only see your sessions that are running on a single FastX server, and not all your sessions running on different servers in the FastX cluster. Also, you may not be able to reconnect to a session you previously started in a browser connection to FastX. And if you start a session using the desktop client in SSH mode, you may not be able to reconnect to it inside a browser connection later.Next to name, type something like:
slac fastx web
This can be any name you choose.
Next to URL, type:
https://fastx.slac.stanford.edu:3443
- Next to User, type your SLAC Unix username.
- You can leave the "Ignore SSL errors" box unchecked.
- Click the Save button.
- Double click on your new saved session.
- You will be prompted for your SLAC Unix password even if you have a Kerberos ticket on your desktop/laptop because this is using https authentication and not ssh.
- You can start a new session using the same instructions the the above session for "Connecting to FastX" – click the + (plus) icon.
- You can reconnect to one of your already running sessions by double clicking on it under the Name column. It may take many seconds for your saved session to appear.
- You should also see any sessions you already have running that you may have started in a browser connection to FastX.
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