20000503: Xvfb

Chris,
If you running straight openwindows on Solaris, you probably don't have
Xvfb in your /usr/openwin/bin directory. Many OS's like Linux and OSF
ship with Xvfb already installed.

You can build the entire system from scratch (ftp.x.org), or there
are binary distributions out there:
ftp://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/special_request/xvfb/solaris/

I tested out the ferret set above. It requires that you unpack it into
a /usr/X11R6 directory.

Then, as root, you can launch the server like:

/usr/X11R6/bin/Xvfb :1 -screen 0 1280x1024x8 &

This creates a host:1.0 display with 1280x1024 pixels and 8 bits.

You can create a list of hosts in /etc/X1.hosts which you allow to 
contact the server with their DISPLAY variable (if you want several
machines in your lab to connect to it). I start it in the /etc/init.d
startup section on our server.

Steve Chiswell
Unidata User Support






>From: address@hidden (Chris Hennon)
>Organization: UCAR/Unidata
>Keywords: 200005031936.e43JaRG24797

>Steve -
>
>It sounds like Xvfb is what I need.  Can you clear up some confusion I
>have regarding it?  Do I have to install an entire X11R6 distribution to
>gain access to Xvfb?  Or is it something I can get seperately that will
>work within my Solaris operating system.  There is some confusion between
>me and my system administrator about this.  He seems to believe that I may
>already have Xvfb on my machine, but I can't find it.  Thanks.
>
>Chris
>
>On Tue, 2 May 2000, Unidata Support wrote:
>
>> 
>> Chris,
>> 
>> If you are generating gifs to the console display, then yes, you
>> really want ntl to be running so that the shared color map exists
>> between all gempak programs, and any other programs like browsers, desktops,
>> etc. aren't competing with the cron programs for the colors.
>> 
>> If you do a lot of gif generation, then running a virtual X server such as X
> vfb
>> works well so that you don't have to worry about your desktop colors
>> and conflicts with cron jobs. In those cases, you would then have a shear:1
>> display to draw to.
>> 
>> The output you see with >0.0u 0.0s 0:07 0% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w
>> is indicative of running the unix "time" command with a job that shows tha
>> cpu usage. Typically, you would run "time eta_sfc.csh" if you wanted to
>> keep track of how much cpu usage a program took, or if you had
>> quotas invoked on your users. Otherwise, something in your environment
>> may be defined. Since the script is run from cron with csh -f, you
>> should not be inheriting your environment in those cases.
>> 
>> Steve Chiswell
>> Unidata User Support
>