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Persistent Terminals For a Dedicated Computing Box?

Posted by Soulskill on from the persistence-pays-off dept.

Theovon writes "I just built a high-end quad-core Linux PC dedicated to number-crunching. Its job is to sit in the corner with no keyboard, mouse, or monitor and do nothing but compute (genetic algorithms, neural nets, and other research). My issue is that I would like to have something like persistent terminal sessions. I've considered using Xvnc in a completely headless configuration (some useful documentation here, here, here, and here). However, for most of my uses, this is overkill. Total waste of memory and compute time. However, if I decided to run FPGA synthesis software under WINE, this will become necessary. Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out how to get persistent X11 session where I'm automatically logged in (or can stay logged in), while maintaining enough security that I don't mind opening the VNC port on my firewall (with a changed port number, of course). I'm also going to check out Xpra, but I've only just heard about it and have no idea how to use it. For the short term, the main need is just terminals. I'd like to be able to connect and see how something is going. One option is to just run things with nohup and then login and 'tail -f' to watch the log file. I've also heard of screen, but I'm unfamiliar with it. Have other Slashdot users encountered this situation? What did you use? What's hard, what's easy, and what works well?"

3 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. What I read by krappie · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I really want this feature. I've heard of this program that's made for exactly the feature that I want, but I'm unfamiliar with it. HELP ME SLASHDOT YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE!!1!"

  2. Re:Screen works welll by lostguru · · Score: 2, Funny

    vi?

    --
    Jayne: "These are stone killers, little man. They ain't cuddly like me."
    98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smok
  3. Re:screen by Yogiz · · Score: 5, Funny

    Slackware distro:
    cd /usr/src/tar
    wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/screen/screen-4.0.2.tar.gz
    cd ..
    tar -xzf tar/screen-4.0.2.tar.gz
    cd screen-4.0.2
    CFLAGS=" -O2 -march=pentium-m -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"./configure --prefix=/usr
    make
    mkdir /tmp/screen_install
    make DESTDIR=/tmp/screen_install install
    cd /tmp/screen_install
    mkdir install
    vim install/slack-desc
    makepkg screen-4.0.2-i686-1.tgz
    installpkg screen-4.0.2-i686-1.tgz
    cp screen-4.0.2-i686-1.tgz /usr/src/packages
    cd ..
    rm -r screen_install

    What? Difficult? What are you talking about, that's the only good way.