What I tinkered with in recent days was a headless Linux desktop for OBS, running on a server, in my case to gateway an Icecast stream to Twitch.
A number of things need to be considered here:
- Identify what dependencies need to be installed.
- Run a pseudo X11 display server and session.
- Auto-start OBS, auto-start the stream.
- Run a VNC frontend to the X11 session.
- Backups.
OBS from Flatpak
Pretty unusual on a server, but should work without issues:
sudo apt-get install flatpak
sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
sudo flatpak install flathub com.obsproject.Studio
Caveat: There is no OBS Browser source on ARM aarch64, so OBS will not be reasonably usable on Oracle’s “Always Free Tier” VPSes. Believe me. I tried.
X11 dependencies
I run the fvwm3 window manager in the virtual display server, because it’s not completely on the hostile end of the window manager spectrum.
sudo apt-get install x11vnc xvfb fvwm3 menu menu-xdg python3-xdg xbase-clients xterm xauth xinit
X11 startup
For X11 startup, I use a systemd user-unit along with a traditional ~/.xinitrc, a file I hadn’t worked with in ages.
# ~/.config/systemd/user/xinit.service
[Unit]
Description=X virtual framebuffer
[Service]
ExecStart=xinit -- /usr/bin/Xvfb :20 -nolisten tcp -screen 0 1280x720x24
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
Caveat: The preview pane inside OBS requires 24 bit color depth.
The ~/.xinitrc sets a language environment, which I use for influencing the date format inside the OBS browser source. The OBS invocation also starts the stream automatically, and ignores uncontrolled shutdowns of OBS, so the stream will autostart after a reboot.
# ~/.xinitrc
LANG=en_GB.utf-8 flatpak run com.obsproject.Studio --startstreaming --disable-shutdown-check &
exec fvwm3
VNC
The VNC service will be bound to localhost only, but adding a password won’t hurt and will hardly be noticeable once it’s setup and saved in the VNC client.
x11vnc -storepasswd
Another systemd user-unit takes care of starting x11vnc:
# ~/.config/systemd/user/x11vnc.service
[Unit]
Description=x11vnc
Requires=xinit.service
[Service]
ExecStart=x11vnc -forever -usepw -listen localhost -display :20
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
Backups
OBS’s data is saved in: ~/.var/app/com.obsproject.Studio
Access
ssh <theserver> -L 5900:localhost:5900- Connect VNC viewer to localhost
