[idvusers] running IDV in the XVNC and/XVBF

• To: idvusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
• Subject: [idvusers] running IDV in the XVNC and/XVBF
• From: Yuan Ho <yuanho@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
• Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:51:49 -0600

Here is some information from a IDV user and it maybe useful to you:

Dear Yuan:

We have decided that Xvfb is simply broken in our 64-bit CentOS 5.5
environment. We have started running an instance of the Xvnc VNC server
to provide the Xserver we need for our batch programs and it works fine
for us. I would encourage others to try Xvnc if they have trouble with
Xvfb. The intended purpose of Xvnc is to run a virtual
X session to which users can connect over the network. We are simply
running it for the X server to support batch IDV programs, though we
could connect to the server from a VNC client, if necessary for debugging.

Here are some observations on the Xvfb issue:

We gave up on Xvfb after concluding that it is broken, at least
the version which is provided with CentOS 5.5. We suspect
that it was not ported correctly to a 64-bit environment.
Perhaps it makes invalid assumption about the sizes of
data types -- something that is likely to be critical
for a program which handles a complex binary protocol.

Some clues:

A user of IDV reported that he was able to use Xvfb in a
32-bit CentOS environment, but had no luck in a 64-bit installation.

valgrind reports many, many errors when I run Xvfb on mopfl,
but none when I run it on my personal 32-bit Fedora system.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Vince

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: [idvusers] running IDV in the XVNC and/XVBF
    • From: Evan Lowery