Linode with Virtual Graphics Card or VMGL

Hi,

I'm trying to find a way to setup a virtual graphics card on my Linode that I can use OpenGL with. The only options I've found after extensive googling:

o VMGL which requires a physical graphics card, as I understand it, which Xen can then virtualize. I'm not sure if multiple VMs can use the same card. I assume this could use the on-board graphics Intel provides for the CPU. I believe the linode CPUs have on-board intel graphics based on the spec sheets. Linode would have to turn this on?

o VirtualBox virtual graphics card. I don't know if we can use this without actually using a virtualbox host operating system. That is, only use virtualbox guest additions. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Any help would be appreciated!

5 Replies

You can use Mesa. For example:

http://bergbom.blogspot.ca/2011/04/off- … phics.html">http://bergbom.blogspot.ca/2011/04/off-screen-rendering-without-graphics.html

Is there any reason you can't use x11 forwarding over ssh?

… fairly sure the opengl side of things actually happens on the x server itself (which wouldn't be on the linode anyway)

@kuzetsa:

Is there any reason you can't use x11 forwarding over ssh?

… fairly sure the opengl side of things actually happens on the x server itself (which wouldn't be on the linode anyway)

I want to be able to do these operations purely on the linode and be able to capture the results from the virtual display (e.g. using xvfb).

@Guspaz:

You can use Mesa. For example:

http://bergbom.blogspot.ca/2011/04/off- … phics.html">http://bergbom.blogspot.ca/2011/04/off-screen-rendering-without-graphics.html

This looks like what I want, I think, but I'm not sure actually how to go about this. Currently I'm using xvfb for a headless display in X11. I'm looking into how to connect this with mesa but if you can point out a guide that'd be great. I have mesa installed using Arch Linux but I don't see how to use it.

I've never done any of this stuff myself, so I can't offer suggestions for setup, but keep in mind that everything will be done with software rasterization. It might work, but it'll be very slow/CPU intensive.

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