Is there a way to use application that use hardware accelerated OpenGL on a headless machine?

Question

There exist a class of applications that use opengl to provide hardware acceleration, but are not GUI based. However it seems that in the default case, to use opengl, there must be running an X-server with GLX (on the same virtual terminal) for those applications to function.

My specific case is attempting to use gstreamer's gl plugins on a headless machine, but I'm asking a more general question.

• Is there some way around this (esp without modifying the original code)?

I've been trying to research using the framebuffer kernel module, but not getting very far.

Answer 1

Mesa supports software rasterization on offscreen surfaces.