Problems connecting to your TRE workspace

Introduction

Due to the sensitive nature of the datasets provided within our TRE, it is important that multiple layers are utilised to provide an adequate “air gap”. Occasionally one of these layers may have issues which prevent you from accessing your TRE workspace. These problems usually manifest themselves in one of the following ways. We’ll try and describe these in this article.

AWS Terminology

When you log in to the TRE, the landing page is referred to as the ‘Service Workbench’. This is where you will click on studies and connect to your workspace. When you click ‘connect’ this is a AWS AppStream link and opens a new tab for your virtual desktop of the TRE.

Problems Connecting to the Workspace

Ending your AppStream session

You may see a blank or black screen while trying to connect to your workspace. You may or may not be able to see the mouse cursor - that’s ok.

We recommend waiting at least 1-2 minutes before taking any action as sometimes your workspace might be under heavy load while processing data etc.

However, if your workspace doesn’t appear after waiting a few minutes, we recommend clicking End Session under the user icon at the top right of your window.

You can then return to Service Workbench (the TRE home page) and refresh the page. This will generate a new AppStream link. You can then connect to your workspace in the usual way. Hopefully this time it will work - if not, please do not hesitate to open a support ticket.

AppStream sessions terminate automatically after 30 minutes to ensure security and resource management. Typically, there is no need to click ‘End Session’ under normal circumstances. Workspaces will continue to run in the background until they enter autohibernation to conserve resources associated with maintaing the workspace.

It keeps saying “Starting VNC Session” and “VNC session was closed”

Stopping your workspace.

If you are able to see this status message, the AppStream session is working fine but your workspace may be running slow or has crashed.

If this happens, we recommend returning to Service Workbench and selecting “Stop”. Once the workspace has been stopped, you can click “Start” again and try to connect again once the workspace state has returned to ‘Running’.

We do not recommend terminating your workspace unless you are absolutely certain you want to do this. Please see our article about the differences between stopping and terminating your workspace.

The web browser simply shows “An error occurred”

If this happens, it is likely that there is a more serious error with your AppStream session. If you are able to end your AppStream session (as in “A blank or black screen is shown while trying to connect”), we recommend closing your browser and waiting 30 minutes for the session to naturally expire. If it happens repeatedly, please open a support ticket.

It shows “400 Bad Request”

When you click “Connect” in SWB, a single use and automatically expiring link is used to connect to the desktop session. This means you can only click Connect once and future attempts will produce the error “400 Bad Request”. Either refresh the SWB page, or start a new session by going to https://hic-tre.dundee.ac.uk/

HIC Knowledge Base