[mythtv-users] modernizing mythtv

[Simon Hobson]

Will Dormann <wdormann at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/10/14, 12:58 PM, Hika van den Hoven wrote:
>>> I have completely headless BE, I upgrade the kernels and run setup
>>> remotely no problem. No X installed.
>> 
>> You're sure you don't have a 'hidden' X-server running on your
>> backend to facilitate?
> 
> 
> I'm also curious about this.   mythbackend has several X library
> dependencies, and therefore I would think that somewhere along the way
> you'd run into trouble if they were not present.

As has already been pointed out, some people who haven't come across it before may be confused by "client" and "server" in the X environment.

The *server* is the package that takes commands from a client and processes them to form an image on a display - and also handles taking user input and passing it back to the client. Ie the server is the end with the display and keyboard.

The *client* is the program that calls on a server in order to interact with the user. It need not have any local display or input hardware on the machine.

Integral to X is the concept that client and server communicate via a network, even if that network is a local connection (ie localhost) where client and server reside on the same machine. Running display and client on the same machine is merely a special case of running them on arbitrary machines connected by a network.
Prior to the advent of "security issues" it needed no special settings to use any arbitrary server - you just started the client program, giving it an option to say which display server to use. These days you need to change the config which tends to restrict the display server to only local (ie localhost) connections to prevent random people on the network putting program windows up on your screen (which is a good prank, speaking from experience :) )

As a side effect, apart from "desktop" environments (which try and take over the whole screen and so would conflict), you can run multiple programs on multiple remote machines - with each drawing into it's own window(s) on the one server. So from the user POV, you have multiple "applications" running on your screen - but they may be on multiple remote machines. This is something that's "a bit strange" to those brought up on "single user" environments like Windows or Mac*.
It is also very, very different to things like VNC and RDP which usually (RDP does have other options) simply put the remote desktop in a window. RDP has a lot in common with X BTW.


Yes, MythTV backend requires some X libraries - but only client and common libraries. It has no dependency on an X Server.


* Mac OS X does have integral support for X. IIRC (it's a while since I last set one up from scratch) you have to install it, but once installed you can open a terminal window using the built in "Terminal" app, do "ssh -Y user at host", and then when you launch an X application on the remote machine, the local X server will fire up to service it (ditto for starting local X applications, minus the ssh bit).