Using MATLAB from your own Computer

Using MATLAB remotely on Linux and OS X

Open a terminal. To find the Terminal application on OS X, click on the magnifying glass on the top right of your screen and type Terminal into the search box.

1. OS X only: Download the latest stable version of XQuartz. Older versions of OS X have XQuartz installed already.
2. Type ssh -X USERNAME@linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca into the terminal, changing USERNAME to your WatIAM username. Press enter.
3. You will be prompted to input a password. This is your corresponding WatIAM password. Press enter when you are done typing in your password.
4. Once you are authenticated, you will be presented with a shell. Run matlab -nodesktop -nosplash.

The -X allows you to do X forwarding. This allows you to spawn windows on your local machine that are being rendered on the remote machine. In short, you will find this useful because you will be able to see the figures you make in MATLAB remotely.

Using MATLAB remotely on Windows

You can use the PuTTY terminal emulator to connect from your Windows environment. There are other SSH clients available, but we will talk about this one.

1. Download and run Xming for your architecture. Make sure that it is running while you are running PuTTY.
2. Download and run PuTTY for your architecture. You will see a screen not unlike the one below.
3. In the Host Name box, type linux.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca.
4. Under SSH → X11, make sure to Enable X11 forwarding.
5. Click the Open button.
6. You will be asked for your WatIAM username and subsequently the corresponding password.

You can save yourself the trouble of repeating many of the above steps in PuTTY by creating a Saved Session.