[Discuss] FreeNx

[noel at natnix.com]

Hi John,

I think the thing you're looking for is XVNC.

If I understand you correctly, you want to keep a few headless (no
monitor, keyboard, or mouse) computers running X applications, and be
able to connect to those computers and disconnect without terminating
the X programs running on them.

The pure X11 way:
start an X11 server on your headed box, login to your headless box, set
DISPLAY="headed:0" and run xterm on the headless box.   This will
display an xterm running on headless on the headed display.  However,
when you terminate headed, xterm will die.

The XVNC way:
XVNC pretends to be an X11 server running on the headless box. set
DISPLAY=:2 and start xterm on headless.  You won't see xterm on the
screen, it will be on XVNC's virtual display

On headed, connect vncclient to headless:2  You'll see your xterm
running.  When you disconnect vncclient, xterm will continue to run as
long as XVNC on headless keeps running.  You can connect vncclient to
headless from any computer, and multiple connections at the same time if
you like.

Does that souns like what you want to do?

~Noel




> I am still trying to decide how best to proceed with my three boxs, that 
> is, X-xdm, freeNx or some other but I have a question about the X-xdm 
> route.  If once you've setup your X headless server and the network 
> connection to the thin (or fat ) client is broken can you still plug a 
> keyboard, mouse and monitor into the server and get it to work, now that 
> you've modified the display manager??
> 
> John Blomfield