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## Changing hosts

One of VisIt's strengths is its ability to operate on files that exist on remote computers. The default host is: "localhost", which is a name understood by the system to be the name of your local computer. To access the files on a remote computer, you must provide the name of the remote computer in the Host text field by either typing the name of a remote computer and pressing the Enter key or by selecting a remote computer from the list of recently visited hosts. To access the list of recently visited hosts, click on the down-arrow at the far right of the Host text field.

Changing the host will cause VisIt to launch a database server on the specified computer so you can access files there. Note that if you do not have an account on the remote computer, or if VisIt is not installed there, you will not be able to access files. Also note that VisIt may prompt you for a password to authenticate your access to the remote computer. To set up password-less access to remote computers, refer to "Setting Up Password-less ssh".

Once a database server is running on the remote computer, its file system appears in the directory and file lists. The host name for each computer you access is added to the list of recently visited computers so that you may switch easily to computers you have recently accessed. If you installed VisIt with the provided network configurations then the list of recently visited computers also contains the hosts from the host profiles, which are covered later in this document.