Topspin and Iconnmr

From the viewpoint of safely providing a walk-on environment, IconNMR is quite handy.  Here is a simple format of how we can implement this. The immediate platform that can benefit from this is the new 800 MHz spectrometer.  

Before we proceed, keeping the target users in mind i.e. UWNetid users, we should first replicate our Krb5/LDAP auth/auth system in the 800 MHz system's host.

• We can implement the same icewm window manager with the usual startup script. 
• From the autostart.prop file, we can start iconnmr. 
• IconNMR can be configured so that the user is locked out of changing any parameters.  This locks up the Topspin gui automatically so that TS is used only to display the progress of data being collected and the spectrum that gets generated. 
• We still need to make sure that the user cannot access autostart.prop and remove the icon startup command. Such a possibility will give them a potential to access the regular TS interface freely with all its functionalities. 
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With further consultation from Bruker,  it looks like this is the simplest way to implement this scheme as of now.

continued 10.24.2011

There are a few points worth recording after further investigation here.

• When the user is logged into ICONNMR interface, based on the configuration, indeed the user cannot access the autostart.prop from the Topspin main window. In fact, most of the pull down menu items on the top are disabled automatically.
• One caveat that needs to be mentioned is this. It takes a few seconds for the autostart.prop to kick in so that IconNMR starts up in earnest. During this period, the topspin window is like a normal window. Nevertheless one cannot prevent IconNMR from starting eventually.  
• A more serious issue is the following : Until a dataset is open from within ICONNMR, the gui lockdown does not commence.
• The TOPSPIN gui lock down includes the inability for a user to close the TS window by brute force i.e. by using the 'X' widget on the top right corner of the window. 
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