marinanewman

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Nov 28, 2002
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Not sure I am in the right forum for this but have a client that wants me to install xvfb on server and I have no clue what it is, what it does or how to install or even if I should..

Can someone please enlighten me...
 

dgbaker

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Sep 20, 2002
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If it's the one I'm thinking of, you can go into WHM - Software - Install an RPM and select XFree86-Xvfb from the list. This will automatically install it for you.

Why though would your client want/need virtual framebuffer X server?

Xvfb is an X server that can run on machines with no display hardware and no physical input devices. It emulates a dumb framebuffer using virtual memory.

The primary use of this server was intended to be server testing. The mfb or cfb code for any depth can be exercised with this server without the need for real hardware that supports the desired depths. The X community has found many other novel uses for Xvfb, including testing clients against unusual depths and screen configurations, doing batch processing with Xvfb as a background rendering engine, load testing, as an aid to porting the X server to a new platform, and providing an unobtrusive way to run applications that don't really need an X server but insist on having one anyway.
 

marinanewman

Active Member
Nov 28, 2002
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I have no idea... they have a big &famous& site in malaysia and supposedly they need it to admin the site..

I am totally unaware of what it does to start off with - so not sure whether to install it or not for them..

Will it - or can they hurt the server in anyway if I did install it??

Please advise..
 

dgbaker

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The best way is to do a little research on it.

http://ca.google.yahoo.com/bin/query_ca?p=Xvfb

This will gives lots of sites including man pages

Read number three from ITWorld, great article step through on this exact topic.
 

navmonkey

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Aug 19, 2003
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Another use of Xvfb is by java to create image by servlet or JSP. If you do not want to install Xvfb, you can start your X server instead.