How can I start X11 on a Linux system without graphics hardware?

Question

I want to run some xulrunner based program on EC2 - it will run automatically but it needs some display as far as I understand. That probably requires X11 with some dummy screen driver.

How can I do that? (or run xulrunner on EC2 otherwise).

Answer 1

Alternative solution: XVNC, which you can connect to with a VNC client if you want to see what is happening: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~magi/doc/vnc/xvnc.html

Answer 2

Yes, a common solution to this is to run Xvfb, which is a X11 server with a virtual framebuffer. It doesn't actually display anything, but other than that it behaves exactly like any other X11 server.

Answer 3

Xvfb is an X server that does not actually connect to any hardware.