Running Mathematica Remotely

Since you are now allowed to Install Mathematica on your own computer, the information here about installing the fonts is now obsolete, but still here in case anyone finds it useful.

Note that installing Mathematica locally will install the fonts.

Older information

Thanks to maj36 for this information.

When trying to run mathematica remotely on a DAMTP computer from the laptop network it complains about not having the correct fonts installed. The fonts need to be installed on the laptop.

The following was written for X11 running under Mac OS X, but could be adapted for other systems.

  1. Go to the following website download and unzip the BDF format fonts only into ~/Desktop/BDF. (I couldn't get it to work with either the Type1 or the PCF fonts). Where do I get a copy of the latest version of the MathFonts?
  2. Make a font directory and copy over the fonts. 
    cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts
mkdir X
cp ~/Desktop/BDF/* /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/X
  3. Adjust font path 
    xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/X
xset fp rehash
  4. Run Mathematica remotely. e.g. 
    ssh -Y username@hostname.ac.uk mathematica &

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