Running a program with Gui without displaying in Ubuntu

Question

I have a server running Ubuntu 14.04. I want to run a 3d modeling software on it. I will be sending some parameters based on which the software will automatically generate a model and send the data back. Throughout this process, I dont need to interact with the Gui of the software, but the software launches a GUI whenever its called.

Is there a way to run this without needing a display.

I have tried X11 forwarding, but that just launches the Gui on my local machine. I need a way in which the app runs fully on the server itself, without needing a display.

Answer 1

You will need Xvfb to virtualize a X11 server, so first do:

apt-get install xvfb 

You might also need these packages with xvfb:

sudo apt-get install x11-xkb-utils xfonts-100dpi xfonts-75dpi xfonts-scalable xfonts-cyrillic x11-apps

Then you can run your app like this without any GUI:

Xvfb :19 -screen 0 1024x768x16 &
export DISPLAY=:19
myapp &