Note: Support refers to the http://support.geosc.uh.edu website.

Thinanywhere Software

Thinanywhere is a remote access application to run all your UNIX apps on a windows PC. You can run any of the popular UNIX graphical apps like FOCUS, Geoframe, Seisup etc right on your pc desktop.

In order to use Thinanywhere you need to,

Obtain an account on the thinanywhere server (read the section on Support about how to obtain user accounts)
Download the thinanywhere client software from the “download software” section of Support.
Install this client software on your PC/Laptop etc.
Start up the software and follow these instructions.

First, locate the thinanywhere icon on your desktop or start up thinanywhere normally,

Then, fill in the details for the following fields, “Username”, “Password” and “Remote IP” (all these would have been sent to you when you requested for an account).

The other fields can be kept at the default values, but you may want to pay special attention to “Bandwidth” and “Display”, if you are over a DSL/CABLE or other fast network change it to “high” and over a modem change it to “low”. Regarding “Display”, you may be interested in making it atleast 8/24 multi mode

This will make sure you don’t have color flashing issues.

After a successful login, you will see a window similar to one below. At that point right click anywhere on the desktop of the thinanywhere session and start a new window.

Which will give you a display similar to one below?

Connecting to a server

Now you are ready to connect to the various department servers and start running applications like Geoframe, Seisup etc. In the first window decide where you are going to login, then in the second window key in “xhost + servername” so for example you want to connect to geossun1.geosc.uh.edu (for running Geoframe), in the white window key in “xhost + geossun1.geosc.uh.edu") and in the black window key in “ssh geossun1.geosc.uh.edu –l your-username-on-geossun1" NOTE:It is a -lower-case L and not the number 1). All you are doing is granting geossun1 the rights to display application windows on your desktop and through ssh logging onto geossun1. The display would be something like this,

So at this point enter your password and you will be logged into geossun1, after that set the DISPLAY environment on geossun1 (you need to tell geossun1 where you want to send the display out to) fermat.agl.uh.edu:NUMBER_YOU_SEE_ON_THE_TOP_LEFT_CORNER_OF_THINANYWHERE_WINDOW:0.0. If you are wondering about this, here is an example, check out the previous figure, and note the number on the top left corner of the window.

So for this example, it would be “setenv DISPLAY fermat.agl.uh.edu:80.0” (If you are logging on to sheriff.agl.uh.edu instead of geossun1, set the DISPLAY environment as “export DISPLAY=fermat.agl.uh.edu:80.0”)

Your final screen (before you start running applications) should look something like above. That’s it, now you should be able start FOCUS, Geoframe etc. Below is an example snapshot of me running Geoframe.

Once you are done, you need to exit thinanywhere session, do so by simply closing the window, now you need to know that you can actually save the session (that is when you close the window and when a prompt comes up asking whether you want to “Disconnect” or “Exit”, choosing “Disconnect” saves your session exactly as you see, so you could work at your home and then Disconnect and then go to your friend’s place start up thinanywhere (and select, resume and you will see everything exactly as you left it. But remember we have only a few licenses and choosing “Disconnect” means you are tying up a license. So choose “Exit” whenever you can and “Disconnect” only for emergency cases. If you have too many sessions open or been on too long the sys-admin will be disconnecting these sessions manually. Check out a snapshot below of the exit procedure.

This is what you will see after you start up thinanywhere and have a saved session, remember to select it and either end it or continue working on it

This is what you will see when you attempt to close the Thinanywhere window

Additionally here is a link to the complete Thinanywhere manual.

Thinanywhere Errors

The most common errors are userid/password invalid – this means you have lost your account information or typing in the wrong userid/password or you simply don’t have an account on the thinanywhere server.
You may also see License limit reached error – this means too many people are on the server, wait for some time and try again later or if you see this consistently, send the sys-admin an email