I would like to render with Cycles on a headless machine, without an X-server.
Has anyone done this with success?
I am getting the following error on Linux using Blender 2.78a:
$: blender -b cube.blend -E CYCLES -x 1 -o cube -f 1 terminate called after throwing an instance of 'OCLRT::xcb_error' what(): XCB ERROR: X session is not running! Read new prefs: /home/mbomba/.config/blender/2.78/config/userpref.blend read blend: /home/mbomba/Documents/art/3d/cube.blend
Update:
To clarify, this works fine if executed in a terminal when an X session is running. I'm wondering if it's a bug -- I was thinking about automating a cluster to render animations but the X dependency is kind of raining on my parade.
Update 2:
I compiled a version of Blender using the WITH_HEADLESS flag and I get the same error when I run it without X.
Update 3:
While I haven't been able to assimilate any of this information into a coherent solution, after some research I found that people encountered the same error occurs frequently with Beignet / Intel OpenCL driver installations.
Update 4:
I tested this via ssh on another machine and it works fine. It must be a problem specific my system. I would like to know what library is causing this issue, but I plan to do most of my rendering on the other machine anyhow.
SOLUTION
As sambler suggested in the comment, changing set(WITH_CYCLES_DEVICE_OPENCL TRUE) to set(WITH_CYCLES_DEVICE_OPENCL FALSE) in intern/cycles/CMakeLists.txt prior to building allowed me to render with Cycles in a tty. The issue must be related to the OpenCL drivers on my system.