In deployment war stories, I wrote that Pharo's graphical environment is managed by MorphicUIManager, but when invoked -nodisplay, Pharo's graphical environment is managed by NonInteractiveUIManager.

I prefer running my servers without X as far as possible, so I want to have RFBServer running within the Pharo image, to be able to VNC into it.

As it turns out, modifying one method, MorphicUIManager>>onSnapshot:, gets me what I want. Here's what the method looks like in Pharo 1.4, timestamped CamilloBruni 2/13/2012 23:22, (minus comments because I don't like the way the Smalltalk syntax highlighting JS library I'm using is rendering them):

onSnapshot: resuming

  resuming ifTrue: [
    Smalltalk isInteractive ifFalse: [
      ^ self nonInteractiveManager onSnapshot: resuming ].
    Smalltalk isHeadless ifTrue: [
      ^ self headlessManager onSnapshot: resuming ]].

  SystemWindow wakeUpTopWindowUponStartup

I just needed to add tests for RFBServer, so now the method becomes like this:

onSnapshot: resuming
   	
  resuming ifTrue: [
    Smalltalk isInteractive ifFalse: [
      RFBServer server isRunning ifFalse: [
        ^ self nonInteractiveManager onSnapshot: resuming ]].
    Smalltalk isHeadless ifTrue: [
      RFBServer server isRunning ifFalse: [	
        ^ self headlessManager onSnapshot: resuming ]]].
   
  SystemWindow wakeUpTopWindowUponStartup

And now VNC into the Pharo image works, yay!

Tags: deployment, headless, RFB, VNC