Using dummy X server
Sometimes I need to run applications, which need an available X server, on cluster. I find this ‘Xvfb’ command really useful. It will create a virtual framebuffer X server using virtual memory. All you need to do is lunch this Xvfb
Xvfb :{display number} &
and set the environment variable DISPLAY to ‘localhost:{display number}’, then lunch anything you want. In some Linux distribution, there is an even simpler command called ‘xvfb-run’. You can run any X-based program by
xvfb-run {program name}