Debian Administration

You can remove the settings used to specify the mouse, and this will allow XFree86/X.org to start - however I'm not sure what this will do with regards to VNS.

The relevent section I have for my mouse is this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "CorePointer"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
        Option          "Protocol"              "ImPS/2"
        Option          "Emulate3Buttons"       "true"
        Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
EndSection

For the keyboard I have this:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver          "keyboard"
        Option          "CoreKeyboard"
        Option          "XkbRules"      "xorg"
        Option          "XkbModel"      "pc105"
        Option          "XkbLayout"     "gb"
EndSection

You can certainly remove the mouse entry (which will be different to mine most likely) and still have a usable X11 setup - whether VNC will still run is a different question. Should be easy enough to test though.

You might find the article on giving Xen servers VNC useful as it describes the setup of GDM/KDM to directly serve a desktop with VNC...Steve

You don't need X in the first place so that's one problem solved :-)

Well, vnc doesn't require a "local" mouse or keyboard, so if you're talking about a local X-server, why should you have it running ?

I see no reason to want X on a firewall but if your mileage varies: Why not enable XDMBC in yout favourite display manager and disable all local xservers?

The original UNIX pioneers (Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie), address this 'problem' with Plan 9. The solved it with bind, private name space and 9P. Read about them here.

With 9P there is no difference if something is local or remote, they both can be accessed and mounted the same way. With 'everything is a file' you can mount a remote /dev file server, and bind it's /dev/keyboard to anywhere you want, like the computer you want to access with a remote file system.

A cool thing is Plan 9 has /dev/tcp, unlike Unix where networking was added later, and wasn't a file server, rather some ugly binary hack. Lets say you only have one computer with Internet access, and want it on another one. What you do is mount the remote file system (very easy with private name spaces, unlike in UNIX, where it is a global name space), and bind it's /dev/tcp to yours. Now you have a gateway to the Internet with just a few CLI commands. This would require running another application to do so in UNIX, but is only a simple command away in Plan 9.

I am current in the middle of packaging Inferno, basically Plan 9 next generation. It was designed to either run on top of other operating systems, or native mode. It has the same design a Plan 9, so everything I said above can also be done in it.

-- ems

I managed to get my X server to start with neither my keyboard or mouse attached using the following entries in my XF86Config-4 file under debian stable:

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option  "AllowMouseOpenFail"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Configured Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "CorePointer"
        Option          "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
        Option          "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
        Option          "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
        Option          "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "Generic Keyboard"
        Driver          "void"
        Option          "CoreKeyboard"
        Option          "XkbRules" "xfree86"
        Option          "XkbModel" "pc104"
        Option          "XkbLayout" "gb"
EndSection

However, gnome does start with a few error messages that I haven't bothered to work out how to remove. Hope this helps.

I used on one computer a fake monitor. It is quite easy to build, you need only three resistors. Here is a schematic for it: http://madmodders.se/moddningar/dummy/index.html

I had a same problem with Debian and it took a long while to figure out the VERY SIMPLE fix.

Boot would stall when no monitor was found.

Here is why and how to fix:

The Video drivers now auto-detect monitor, and in particular its available modes. It will only do this with monitor connected. I spend long time looking for work around here - but this was wasted time.

Xorg software stalls during boot when it gets video error because it prompts user to look at log file and/or continue. There are some scripts that get invoked when error occurs. I was very tempted to rewrite these so they did not require for keyboard input on error.

Then it came to me!

The Xorg software was set up to create XSERVER on console (ie normal monitor/keyboard) - expecting this to be used as Xterminal to access applications locally or elsewhere.

Though I am using an XServer, it's not local. In my case I was running GNOME desktop so a check on the login setup (login window prefs, security,configure x-server) shows VT0 listed as Xserver. Removing this entry FIXED THE PROBLEM!

Machine now boots and can be accessed remotely using X.

If desired,an Xserver can still be run on machine after connecting monitor - just log in and type startx.

Solution you can see here:

http://www.bestweb.com.ua/en/blog/52-running-x-server-on-debian-u buntu-without-a-physically-connected-monitor