Error loading slicer from a remote computer using ssh and X11 forwarding

Support
1

I am a new MacOS user. I have a problem when I ssh into a remote computer using X11 forwarding. I am trying to view 3D Slicer from my remote computer. 3D Slicer loads correctly, but I am unable to visualize anything. However, if I hover the mouse I can see the menu options. But I am unable to see any data that I load. On the terminal, I see QOpenGLWidget: Failed to create context and composeAndFlush: QOpenGLContext creation failed composeAndFlush: makeCurrent() failed.

I tried updating my MacOS in the hope that the driver would also update. But that did not help either.

I am using a Mac mini (Late 2014), macOS Catalina with a 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 processor and Intel Iris Graphics.

The problem is on the Mac, since Slicer loads when I ssh into the remote computer using my Ubuntu laptop.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Operating system: macOS Catalina
Slicer version: 4.10/4.11
Expected behavior: Slicer loads correctly
Actual behavior: Slicer doesn’t load correctly

2

it sounds like your X11 server on the local machine doesn’t have opengl support. I am not entirely sure about mac, but in our lab we use VirtualGL (https://virtualgl.org/vgldoc/2_2_1/) on the remote machine and connect to it from our desktop machines either using VNC (on windows/linux) or vglconnect (linux). That way opengl rendering is done on the remote machine. For us it works really well (a 1080TI easily supports 5-6 concurrent connections, all of which doing 3D rendering at reasonably large datasets 1-2 gigavoxels).

There are other alternatives that other may chime in.

1 Like
3

The instructions are a bit rough, and geared toward doing the work on the cloud, but this approach is another way of using the remote GPU with Slicer.