I'm looking for a way to do either of the following:

1) Start a program to run outside of the dimensions of my X screen (totally off beyond the right of the monitor, for example)

2) Have the window of the program never appear at all (Is there a graphical equivalent of /dev/null?)

I've got a semi solution in which I pass in the argument -geometry 1x1+10000+10000, which makes the window very small and appear in the bottom right of the monitor, but I'm looking for a little cleaner solution.

Thanks

-LFM

xvfb (X Virtual Frame Buffer) is designed to do this kind of background/headless processing.

This page has an example:
http://www.sara.nl/systems/lisa/usage/batch/xvfb-jobs

What's the purpose? would having it on a different work space work? If you're running kde you could even run it in a different activity. Why wouldn't these be viable options.

MensaWater-
Thanks for the tip. I will dig into xvfb.

Knightron-
In brief, the purpose of this is:

I have application X that used to run on computer X. I am moving application X to computer Y, which also runs other applications. The end user needs to see and use application Ys, but it is not desired that the end user sees application X. So I need a way to start app X but not show it.

I have thought about starting it on a different workspace, but alas I haven't figured that out yet. I actually have another thread regarding that very train of thought.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-gnome-916433/

And I'm using gnome, so KDE is out as an option.


-LFM

Gday mate, i don't know if you're still on LQ, but here's something that i discovered last night that might be helpful. In kde, you can open the application you don't want to be seen; right click on it's title, go to advanced and then to special application settings. Click the 'size and position' tab, and then, tick the 'Desktop' box, then change the setting right next to it; first one to 'force', and then the next one to the desktop the other user will not see.
Doing this will make sure every time that application is opened, it will only open to that desktop. I've the current system set up too, and i remain on the desktop i'm viewing instead of them automatically switching with the opened program; Gimp is the exception.

You say kde is out of the question, well i think this may be kdes window managers ability, so if i'm correct, it may be possible to do as i describe in gnome, using kwin instead of metacity. You can change the window manager in the gconf.
Good luck

The OP indicated that they don't want the end user to even know this other application is running. It seems what you are suggesting would need to be done on the end user's display initially. It also seems rather complicated given that xvfb already exists for the exact purpose the OP described and isn't dependent on either gnome or kde.

I note that he never responded back in this thread or the other one so suspect he solved his problem without updating the thread or marking it resolved.

I assumed the op would know how to start cron jobs, and that the desired application would be opened that way. I just trying to be as helpful as i could; i'd never heard of xvfb. I just did some reading on it, and from a quick browse, it seems like that would be the way to go about this.