Remote Access

MX beamlines at Diamond are highly automated and four of them (I03, I04, I04-1 and I24) support remote data collection.
For most standard macromolecular crystallography experiments, data collection can be carried out without users being physically present at the beamline.

As an alternative to traditional onsite visits, teams may choose full remote access, in which all participants work offsite, or a hybrid onsite visit, where only part of the team is present onsite. These approaches minimize travel requirements and facilitate involvement from distributed teams.

Some activities may still require users to be on site, for example:

• Experiments requiring specialist hardware intervention
• Serial crystallography or non‑standard sample delivery protocols
• Work requiring laboratory access or higher biological containment

If you are a first-time user or you are unsure whether your experiment is suitable for remote access, we strongly encourage you to contact us in advance by writing to [email protected].

To arrange for the experiments, follow the instructions at this link 

Connection speed

To ensure your collection speed is sufficient to run the experiment smoothly, log in via NoMachine, open Firefox, and open a YouTube video. If this runs without dropping frames, the connection speed is generally sufficient for data collection with GDA.

Unable to log in

User not added to the visit

Only users registered for a beamline session are allowed to log in the control computer during the beamtime. If you are unable to do that, this might be due to you not being added to the visit. If this occurs during working hours, you need to contact your BAG PI to get registered in the system. Outside working hours, the problem is likely unfixable and would require your visit to be rescheduled.

Using the wrong FedID or password

You may be inadvertently using the wrong FedID or password. You can check your FedID and register with the STFC password manager to reset your password here. We recommend you do this immediately if you fail to log in twice. Following a third failed attempt with either incorrect FedID or password further log in attempts from your IP will be temporarily blocked for 15 minutes.

If you are on a private network behind a firewall the Diamond systems will only see the IP address at your gateway - consequently this means if you or your colleagues make three failed attempts from any machine with any FedID from behind this gateway machine further attempts from inside this will be also be temporarily blocked since we only see your gateway IP. Please wait for this temporary block to end.

Wrong beamline

Sessions are associated to specific beamlines. You won’t have permission to connect to the wrong beamline. Please check your emails from the User Office or log in to UAS or ISPyB and check the calendars.

Quota exceeded

If you can't connect to the beamline or to a generic computer using the nxclient then you may be over quota. To fix this, you will need to use ssh to remove files manually.

In Linux/Mac, from a terminal:

• type ssh [email protected] and login with your password (if you can't login via ssh to ssh.diamond.ac.uk please check all the options below)
• check your quota (type quota on the command line)
• check the size of files and directories type du -hs * to find identify larger files (usual culprits are mozilla or processed data in your home directory)
• delete some files to avoid reaching the quota, close ssh and log in

In Windows:

• Install a tool such as putty to allow ssh connections, then follow instructions for Linux/Mac in the putty terminal.

You've added something in your profile configuration

If you have added instructions such as "module load mx" to either .bashrc or .bashrc_local in your home directory you may not be able to log in via nx

To address this problem, ssh (if using Linux/Mac) or use putty (from a Windows machine) to log into a command line interface and use a file editor (e.g. nano) to remove these lines from the files.

The ssh key has changed

Periodically (typically during shutdowns) our linux systems are reinstalled and keys for ssh are updated which result in mismatch in ssh keys in your local account .ssh/known_hosts file. 

If you are getting the following message (or similair): "Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic,password)".

In Linux/Mac: in the home directory on your local machine type cd .ssh and delete the file known_host using the command rm known_hosts. Please try to log in again and follow the on screen commands.

In Windows: You should be prompted to alter the ssh keys by no machine. If not these are stored under your home directory, in a .ssh folder. You will need to show hidden files to see this folder. Then remove either open the file and remove any hosts associated with diamond, or remove the whole file. 

GDA doesn’t start

If you don’t have a visit scheduled or are logging into a different machine from the beamline control one, you won’t be able to start GDA. Check you are connecting to the correct beamline and you are in the visit, otherwise you will be automatically connected to a random available PC with no control on the experiment.

If you are a first time user or wish to test remote access prior to an experiment, please contact [email protected] to set up a test session during a machine day or shutdown.

If you are trying to process data check our video.

In NX player for Mac, where is the '#' symbol?

The keyboard shortcut for '#' symbol is 'alt (to the right of the space bar)' + '3'

How do I expand NX remote session on 2 screens?

In the NoMachine options (move your mouse to the top right corner and wait for a flap to appear and click on it) choose "Display" and "Fullscreen on all screens". Please note this is not advisable if your connection is slow. Instead, consider using NX only for the control of the beamline (on a single screen) and using ISPyB to monitor automated processing and webcams