testing with xvfb virtual display starting from CRON - missing keyboard device

Question

I am trying to run test software using CRON on a RHEL machine. The testing software requires display, so I think the only option is to use xvfb. So I am starting it using xvfb-run wrapper, which creates display :99. It works and tests fine when I run it from my own SSH terminal.

Unfortunately when I want to make CRON start the script it fails. The most I could get from the xvfb-run is to run it with -e switch which dumps some err logs to a file instead of /dev/null. It is not very informative but gives an idea:

XKB: Failed to compile keymap
Keyboard initialization failed. This could be a missing or incorrect setup of xkeyboard-config.
(EE) 
Fatal server error:
(EE) Failed to activate core devices.(EE) 

I assume that CRON user does not have a keyboard, like my terminal does. How to bypass it? Is there some sort of virtual keyboard like virtual display I'm using or I am simply missing some configuration?

Answer 1

I was able to use that successfully only by running xvfb as a system.d service, and the cron scripts were only connecting to it.