[mythtv-users] Any advice on cooling down my backend

[Brian Wood]

Yan Seiner wrote:
> On Fri, September 19, 2008 12:03 pm, Brian Wood wrote:
>> Edmund wrote:
>>
>>> (Brian)
>>> I do ssh into the box now, for everything other than reinstalling the OS
>>> and changing the bios, though I did mess up the network settings once.
>>>
>>> Sorry for asking such a stupid question but will ssh -X -Y ..... still
>>> work if I remove the video card from the server?
>> Sure, why not?
>>
>> The X server is running on your remote machine, and that's the only
>> thing that needs to talk to video hardware.
>>
>> If you want to use VNC you would have to use a standard VNC server, not
>> one that mimics an existing desktop that's using a video card (like
>> X11VNC).
> 
> Last time I looked at the VNC code, it required video hardware.  It works
> by reading the video buffer.  No video card, no video buffer, no VNC.
> 
> There is a dummy video buffer built into the kernel but it is quite
> literally a black hole; it only shows black.
> 
> This is as of a couple of years ago, so perhaps VNC implements some sort
> of virtual buffer, although that would require a huge rewrite of libvnc,
> or the kernel has implemented a functioning virtual buffer, which would be
> much easier to do.  Or perhaps an aspiring kernel driver guru could hack
> one up.  I've been told that it would be easy but clearly it's over my
> head; a kernel hacker I am not.

I'm certain that I have used VNC to create a new "virtual" display that
was totally separate from the X server running on the video card. I
think it was just frame buffer performance, but it had nothing to do
with what was going to the video card.

But that doesn't mean the machine would have booted without a video
card, just that it didn't need the card after the OS started up.

beww