Xvfb standalone

cinderblock · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 1:25 am Post subject: Xvfb standalone

I'm trying to get Xvfb running on my server. (Headless Xen)

Any way to do a minimal compile for only Xvfb?

My end goal is actually to run a small windows app in Wine which has a GUI that I don't ever care to see. (Though if I use Xvfb I'll prolly make myself a screen grab for kicks.)

Do I need to just emerge xorg-server? If so, how many use flags can I take out? USE="-*" ?

Sadako · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:21 am Post subject:

As long as you don't have the minimal USE flag set, it should build Xvfb.

However, the minimal flag actually disables a lot of stuff you probably won't need, as well as a couple of dependencies you might want to be rid of (such as mesa, for one) so if you're comfortable with it you can copy the xorg-server ebuild to an overlay and remove "$(use_enable !minimal xvfb)" line.

Alternatively, you can try the following, may not work but is a simple solution if it does (and it should);

cinderblock · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:35 am Post subject:

I'm trying this now. I assume that this is used with the minimal USE flag (reversing where the ebuild turns off xvfb). Can I also get rid of nptl and xorg use flags?

I still have a large list of dependencies, most of which look like I'd never use and shouldn't need. Maybe time to start hacking at the ebuild in an overlay?

Sadako · Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:53 am Post subject:

I'd leave nptl enabled, that won't cost you anything, but you should disable the xorg USE flag as that's what ensures the Xorg server itself is built, which is what you don't want.

Actually, you'll have to do this via an overlay, as the ebuild will error out if you have the minimal flag set without at least one of xorg, dmx or xorg set too.

You could change the ebuild to consider xvfb as a server too, and adding an xvfb use flag, however it'll be a lot easier to simply comment out the "use minimal || ensure_a_server_is_building" line in pkg_setup().

You're going to get stuck with quite a few library dependencies, that's unavoidable.

Don't worry about all the x11-proto packages though, these are nothing but header files and are compile time only dependencies.
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cinderblock · Posted: Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:48 pm Post subject:

I know it's been a while but I recently had a chance (and reason) to try doing this again.

Modifyting the ebuild to build only Xvfb was easy (very actually). All you need to do is add xvfb to the list of IUSE_SERVERS and change the use_enable for xvfb:

wyv3rn · Apprentice Joined: 18 Aug 2005 Posts: 154 Location: USA

Re-merge xorg-server and it should pull in media-fonts/font-cursor-misc:

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=278487

cinderblock · Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 2:57 am Post subject:

Sorry, I did get this all working by emerging font-cursor-misc. Good to know that this dependency bug has a workaround for now but that it's X.org's fault...

Now the issue is writing the init script. I have a basic one done but it's buggy. I'll prolly ask what the right way to do this is in the proper forum.