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I'm attempting to use the FastX client (not web interface) to SSH into the engaging cluster -- mobaXterm is a bit slow for anything with a GUI. I am having issues I have not previously seen with FastX, and which google has not been helpful with.

Summary of questions

• Does the user need to active the FastX server on engaging, prior to use?
• What is the reason for specifically using eofe8 vs. eofe7 in the FastX example?
• Is there any known issue with the FastX desktop client -- or, has the desktop client been successfully used with Engaging?

Description of issue (steps taken to produce)

After generating a public/private key pair with PuttyGen and loading the .ppk private key into pageant, I uploaded the public .pub key to Engaging through the OOD portal and confirmed its presence in my ssh session with mobaxterm.

The FastX connection is set up as follows:

Name: <name>
Host: eofe7.mit.edu
Port: 22
User: <my username>
Path: fastx-protocol

When I attempt to connect to the server I get an error

Failed to get the session list. SSH exited with error code "1"

The details suggest that “error code ‘1’” refers to “ssh keys rejected, no supported authentication methods".

Interestingly, if I change how the public key is entered in the “authorized_keys” file (prepending “ssh-rsa” to the Putty-generated key), engaging-side, I get a different error: “

Failed to get session list. Unable to contact the server. Check that the server is properly installed and that the SCI is accessible to the user.

No changes are made on my end between these two cases, so it’s confusing why it goes from “server rejected keys” to “unable to contact server”. I'm hoping whatever is causing this change is also responsible for having my publickey denied.

This is while attempting to log into eofe7.mit.edu, which is explicitly suggested at the beginning of the README. I also attempted it with eofe8.mit.edu, same behavior.

The given FastX instructions are a little vague, with eofe8 being the URL and a particular port given (and I think have a typo, should be .mit.edu not .mit/edu in the url), so perhaps I'm missing something.
I believe FastX requires the fastX server to be installed -- is there something I have to do to activate it for my user account?

I use FastX routinely for logging into other CentOS/RHEL servers without issue though none which require keys for login.

Thanks.