The difference would be we don't have graphics cards for server-side 3D
rendering, I will have to steal GPU cycles from the V100's. That should
not matter, other than I'm losing compute power for visual capability.
I guess I'm learning way more than I wanted to about X servers. I should
be able to understand and modify your script for our system. It should be
pretty damn close to the same thing, but even 1 bit wrong can cause a lot
of problems.
Very much appreciated, thank you!
Mike
On Thu, 26 Mar 2020, Jason Edgecombe wrote:
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 10:44:04 -0400
From: Jason Edgecombe <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [VirtualGL-Users] Run level 3 app server
Hello,
At work, we run several Linux servers in mult-user mode (runlevel 3) with a
headless X
service in the background. Two of them have nVidia Tesla V100 3D cards the
others run
nViidia Quadros. The remote graphical logins are handled by StarNet FastX. All
of the
servers have integrated graphics cards with an additional Nvidia or AMD card for
server-side 3D rendering.
Here is the bash code to add the headless X service on DISPLAY :1 (run code as
root)
==========================cut===================
umask 022 #not sure if this is needed
cat > /etc/systemd/system/[email protected] << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=VirtualGL Headless X server on display %I
After=multi-user.target
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "Xorg :%i -listen tcp -config /etc/X11/xorg.%i.conf"
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable headlessx@1
# set VGL_DISPLAY = :1 to use the correct graphics card
cat > /etc/profile.d/virtualgl.sh << 'EOF'
# Configure the default DISPLAY for VirtualGL vglrun
export VGL_DISPLAY=':1'
EOF
==========================cut===================
The above config does NOT include the Nvidia or VirtualGL setup and is probably
missing
some other supporting configs.. Let me know if you have more questions about my
setup.
Sincerely,
Jason
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Jason Edgecombe | Linux Administrator
UNC Charlotte | The William States Lee College of Engineering
9201 University City Blvd. | Charlotte, NC 28223-0001
Phone: 704-687-1943
[email protected] | http://engr.uncc.edu | Facebook
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2020 at 9:28 PM 'Mike Rosing' via VirtualGL User
Discussion/Support
<[email protected]> wrote:
Absolutely awesome answer! I guess "hard to do" is an understatement.
I will give the second idea a try. I only need to limit by user, not by
app, so that's OK. I'm sure I'll have more questions, and I hope I will
ask before I screw it up so bad only reboot saves the system.
Thank you!
On Wed, 25 Mar 2020, DRC wrote:
> Date: Wed, 25 Mar 2020 19:02:13 -0500
> From: DRC <[email protected]>
> Reply-To: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [VirtualGL-Users] Run level 3 app server
>
> On 3/25/20 4:59 PM, 'eresrch' via VirtualGL User Discussion/Support
wrote:
>> I sort of have the 2D rendering working between two linux systems
>> using VGL. The application runs on a large server which is at run
>> level 3, so there is no active X server running. Using vglconnect to
>> the server and then vglrun -d localhost:10.0 <app> I get all the 2D
>> images just fine, but no 3D renderings. This makes some sense because
>> the server isn't running an X server at all. But it does have V100
>> GPU's, so it could do 3D rendering.
>>
>> I have a second, smaller server which does run at level 5 and also has
>> good graphics cards. I don't have local access to it. So I'm
>> wondering if it makes sense at all (probably not, but I'm asking) if
>> it's possible to use the X server on a different system than the
>> application and send the rendered results to a 3rd system. This is
>> similar to the figure under section 9.2 of the user's guide, except
>> that the GPU driver and 3D X server would be on the X proxy host.
>
> No, that is not possible with VirtualGL. The application must be
> running on the same machine as the 3D X server and GPU. What you're
> proposing would involve some form of indirect OpenGL rendering, needed
> in order to send the OpenGL commands from the application server to the
> server containing the GPU. Conceivably, the OpenGL commands could be
> forwarded using remote X11 via an SSH tunnel, but since indirect OpenGL
> via remote X11 doesn't support OpenGL > 1.4, it wouldn't work with most
> modern OpenGL applications. The only other option would be for the
> VirtualGL Faker to intercept every OpenGL command from the application
> (instead of just every GLX command) and forward it to the GPU server
> using a custom OpenGL wire protocol. That would be a huge undertaking
> to develop, not to mention a compatibility and performance minefield.
> Also, even if we created our own OpenGL wire protocol, it still wouldn't
> be possible to support all modern OpenGL features using indirect
> rendering. From a project management point of view, such a solution
> would also be much more complex than I'm capable of developing and
> maintaining on my own (bearing in mind that VGL is one of three open
> source products I maintain for a living.) The only solution I know of
> that does what you propose is NICE DCV (now owned by Amazon), but it is
> proprietary, and there are some limitations (performance being a big
> one) to using a GPU on a different machine than the application.
>
>
>> Alternatively, is there a way to set up a virtual X server which uses
>> the local GPU, but does not connect to anything else except VGL
>> requests?
>
> A "virtual" X server, by definition, doesn't use a GPU at all (Xvfb, for
> instance.) You can set up a "headless" X server (without a physical
> display) that uses the GPU. It should be possible to start such a
> headless X server in Run Level 3. To mimic the supported behavior of
> vglserver_config, you would create an XAuth cookie under
> /etc/opt/VirtualGL/vgl_xauth_key, instruct the headless X server to use
> that cookie, and set the permissions of the cookie so that only certain
> users (members of the vglusers group, for instance) can access it. But
> there isn't any way to limit access to an X server on an
> application-by-application basis. Access can only be limited on a
> per-user basis.
>
>
>> How I got here: I attempted to put the large server up to run level
>> 5, and it hosed the system so no one could log into it. Power cycle
>> was the only recourse. It's designed for our network to live at run
>> level 3, so that's where it stays.
>>
>> I really don't understand all the details of X, VGL or ssh tunneling
>> so my assumption is that this is not simple. It would be great if
>> there is a way to take advantage of the hardware for graphics as well
>> as for the compute power.
>> Thanks.
>>
>
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