Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

megagram · 2008-07-23 18:13:12

Hello. Essentially, I have a HTPC running Arch with Xorg, GDM, Gnome and MythTV connected to a HDTV. I will often try to administer and play around using SSH and VNC from work. However, when I need to restart GDM or X it doesn't seem to work as it says "No Screens Found".

(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

waiting for X server to begin accepting connections
giving up.
xinit:  Connection reset by peer (errno 104):  unable to connect to X server
xinit:  No such process (errno 3):  Server error.

I'm assuming because this is due to the fact that I turn my TV off and so I guess X cannot detect any attached display. I tried making an Xorg.conf file so that it wouldn't try autodetecting displays anymore, but the problem still occurs.

As soon as I get home and turn the TV on and try restarting GDM it works fine.

So my question is, is it possible to start the X without the TV being on so that it is sitting there ready at 1920x1080 for when I get home and turn the TV on and not the other way around?

Thanks!

Hessiess · 2008-07-23 19:43:43

have you tryed starting X via ssh from a computer on your network (asuming you have one) with the tv off.
whenever I try to start a GUI app using SSH it complains about not being able to poen an x window. i asume this is becouse its trying to open it on the local computer, which is alredy running X.

pauldonnelly · 2008-07-23 20:48:34

Hessiess wrote:

have you tryed starting X via ssh from a computer on your network (asuming you have one) with the tv off.
whenever I try to start a GUI app using SSH it complains about not being able to poen an x window. i asume this is becouse its trying to open it on the local computer, which is alredy running X.

It's because $DISPLAY isn't set, so it can't connect to X on the remote machine, and because you don't have SSH set up to forward X connections to your local machine.

I don't think you understand how X works—there is an X server running somewhere, which is connected to a monitor and takes care of actually displaying things, and there is any number of clients running on various machines, which use the server for all their graphics needs. Your problem is that when you start a client it can't find an X server. If you feel like it, you can fix your setup so that graphical programs running on a remote machine display on the remote machine's screen (if it has X running) or on your local machine's screen (either by forwarding through SSH or by using X's built in networking (I'm led to believe the latter is needlessly difficult—do the former)).

Megagram's problem is that the X server, which must be running before any graphical program can use it, refuses to start when the monitor it is connected to is off. I don't know how to fix that, but what about starting everything up properly then suspending to memory?

megagram · 2008-07-23 23:25:17

Paul, thanks for the reply. I haven't tried configuring for suspend to RAM yet... My asus board has issues with it in Windows so I'm weary of it in Linux. But I'll try it out soon for sure...

Now, if I did do suspend to RAM, can I wake it up remotely?

Also, of course this doesn't solve the problem with me needing to restart X remotely with my TV screen turned off.

Thanks.

pauldonnelly · 2008-07-24 03:49:10

megagram wrote:

Now, if I did do suspend to RAM, can I wake it up remotely?
Also, of course this doesn't solve the problem with me needing to restart X remotely with my TV screen turned off.

I don't know if it can wake up remotely or not. Worth a try.

I see now that I misunderstood the situation a bit. I was thinking that you were starting it up remotely to get it ready for your arrival after work, not that you were messing with it from afar and finding X unwilling to restart. Does your TV have any kind of sleep or "off" state? You could perhaps leave it powered on but make it go to sleep from the computer side.

megagram · 2008-07-24 16:09:05

The TV sleep idea isn't a bad one.. I'll look into that.

However, it would still be ideal if I could get X to just start without the display on. I mean I'm pretty sure a Windows machine and, I'm positive that a Mac Pro will start up a window manager and VNC server with the monitor off. Perhaps monitors and TV's behave differently to the computer, however... I'll try completely unplugging my monitor from my Mac one day and see what happens.

Thanks for all the tips/ideas. I'll welcome more if anyone's got 'em!

skottish · 2008-07-24 16:15:14

You can have the default of your system start in init 3, then run startx at home for a graphical log in.

jbrickman0000 · 2014-03-16 22:37:30

There's actually a very easy way to do this. I created

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf

using the code from this link:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xo … r_Settings

in other words the following:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier             "Monitor0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier             "Device0"
    Driver                 "vesa" #Choose the driver used for this monitor
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier             "Screen0"  #Collapse Monitor and Device section to Screen section
    Device                 "Device0"
    Monitor                "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth           16 #Choose the depth (16||24)
    SubSection             "Display"
        Depth              16
        Modes              "1024x768_75.00" #Choose the resolution
    EndSubSection
EndSection

and then after I rebooted with screen unplugged, I found that I could VNC into a very nice console running at 1024x768!

A while back this worked similarly by creating a whole xorg.conf, but not anymore, one must be more specific now a la the above or X tends to crash in general, probably conflicting and/or missing settings in the general override.

Last edited by jbrickman0000 (2014-03-16 22:42:35)

jasonwryan · 2014-03-16 23:21:08

Please don't necrobump: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … Bumping.27

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-23 18:13:12

Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#2 2008-07-23 19:43:43

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#3 2008-07-23 20:48:34

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#4 2008-07-23 23:25:17

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#5 2008-07-24 03:49:10

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#6 2008-07-24 16:09:05

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#7 2008-07-24 16:15:14

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#8 2014-03-16 22:37:30

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

#9 2014-03-16 23:21:08

Re: Is there a way to start X without having the main display turned on?

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