Opening .pdf using Putty ssh?

Question

I am using a windows based computer and have ssh into to my universities cluster using Putty. It connects without a problem but when I try to access a .pdf file I get the following error messages.

evince /cm/shared/docs/cm/user-manual.pdf
Cannot parse arguments: Cannot open display

gnome-open /cm/shared/docs/cm/user-manual.pdf
GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Not running within active session)
GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Not running within active session)
-bash-4.1$ Cannot parse arguments: Cannot open display:

I am not familiar with linux commands or ssh, sorry if this is a stupid question; any help will be much appreciated.

Cheers, Jim

Answer 1

PuTTy cannot open a "graphical" display. It just can display text. Perhaps you can access the file with WinSCP (Windows-Software) and download it to your Windows PC.