From Molecular Modeling Wiki

= Problem

Data in the cluster home directories usually need some processing after they are produced. Frequently, some visualization of data (inputs, results) is required and programs like molden, VMD', and others are often run on the cluster servers to display images on the user's workstation through the X-Window system. Howvere, this method has disadvantages - it is slow, as a huge amount of graphical data is transferred through the network (especially when the object consisting of many atoms moves and rotates), and it sometimes does not waork at all (mostly because of incompatible versions of OpenGL libraries on the cluster server and user's workstation). There is a better solution, though.

Idea

If the mountain won't come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain. Or translated to our case: If you cannot run the graphical program on the remote server to let it work with the local data, make the data local on your workstation and run the program there. In other words - install visualization programs on your workstation where they will be fast and configured exactly for your system and make the data appear as if it is local too. For this, you do not need to copy data from server to your workstation - it is enough just to embed your remote home directory to your local file system. Read on for instructions.

Sshfs

One of the systems which allow to mount the remote directory to local filesystem is called sshfs. On Ubuntu, you can follow these instructions:

• First, add yourself to the fuse group