How to configure OpenSuse to always stay on and leave connection open ?

[masterfred]

Greetings everyone.

I'm using Opensuse on a small computer that needs to run a web site 24/7/365. It's an mp3 player, it's used for music, the player is an html5 player that runs in fullscreen mode of firefox.

It's connected to a TV via HDMI. I've set all possible power options so it never sleed, idle, hibernate or close. Same thing for display, never dim or turn on screen saver. Although the TV is not ALWAYS on the PC's HDMI input, sometime switching to TV Tuner and other time to PC display.

So if we switch the tv's input to tuner and the to PC, opensuse won't re-detect the display and the TV will say NO SIGNAL until I completely reboot the PC ... very annoying ...

The other problem is that the TV is far from the server so I need to use VNC and re-open firefox, go to the player and re-set fullscreen mode. But worst, I can only use VNC once. If I want to reconnect via VNC, I need to login SSH, restart service and then I can connect ...

1. How can we set VNC to ALWAYS accept connection and that from a fresh boot ?

2. Can we automatically launch firefox, at a specific url, in fullscreen mode upon boot ?

3. How do we prevent any disconnection to the TV ?

Thanks !

[masterfred]

Is there really no way to do this ?

[brunomcl]

I have a similar setup but with a VGA connection (the CPU doesn't have DVI/HDMI output) to an LCD TV. I can switch input sources on the TV and the computer signal is always there when I switch back to VGA. The computer is an Atom N415 running oS 11.3 32-bit and XBMC.

It's obviously not optimal, but perhaps you could try the VGA connection if you have one, at least to see if it is a HDMI-out specific issue.

[eng-int]

Is there really no way to do this ?

Unless you are willing to describe the hardware (TV and computer model) and software (openSuSE, GUI type (e.g. KDE, Gnome) and Firefox versions) there are too many options to answer in a post.

As brunomcl suggests you can avoid the problem with the HDMI connection by using VGA and analogue audio. Otherwise you will need to over-ride the automatic Xorg configuration with a custom configuration file.

Likewise you can avoid the Firefox problem by using e.g. Konqueror for the browser, otherwise you will have to disable the automous ersion checking and start-up choices of Firefox. An alternative is to disable the GUI restore session and place a command like "firefox http://example.com/" in the appropriate Autostart directory.

If VNC (TightVNC) has been set up to work, and the xinet daemon enabled (YaST and /etc/xinetd.d/vnc) then it should be available followin a reboot. You have not described what you have to do to start it on each occasion.

[sobrus]

X server won't start until display is connected on linux.
The only way to do it is to install generic VESA driver, but it's unsuitable for HTPC. Rather for server.
And without X there is no vnc.

You can use Vino (gnome vnc server) instead of Xvnc. It runs like VNC on windows - does not logout/logon user upon connecting/disconnecting.
It's more like desktop sharing. Doesn't need daemon configuration too, just run it like any other program in autostart.