3

I'm trying to run a VirtualBox Ubuntu VM via Vagrant on a headless server. The VM has ubuntu-desktop package installed, however when the machine boots up I can't open X applications. DISPLAY environment is empty and setting it to ":0" doesn't help.

I know there is an option to start VirtualBox in non-headless mode (vb.gui = true), however I'm unable to perform vagrant up with that option turned on, unless I connect to the sever with X forwarding turned on (the server I run Vagrant on is headless).

Am I missing something? When I do ssh X tunnelling all the way down to the VM, it works, but then I guess the display will be set by ssh. What I wanted to achieve is a VM that can run x applications on it's internal ":0" screen. I don't need to see them, I need to be able to execute X applications remotely.

Tomek
  • 153
  • 1
  • 5

1 Answers1

1

I've found a very useful thread here based on which I believe I know how to make this working.

It seems like it should be enough to just run Xvfb and then setup the DISPLAY environment variable accordingly before running the X application of interest. A way to check if it's working is to use x11vnc and connect over VNC to the server.

Tomek
  • 153
  • 1
  • 5