carla/Docs/carla_headless.md

<h1>Running CARLA without Display and Selecting GPUs</h1>

!!! note
    See [#225](https://github.com/carla-simulator/carla/issues/225) for an
    alternative method.

This tutorial is designed for

  * Remote server users that have several nvidia  graphical cards and want to
    effectively use CARLA on all GPUs.
  * Desktop users who want to use the GPU that is not plugged on the screen for
    rendering CARLA.

On this tutorial you will learn

  * How to configure your server to have nvidia working on rendering without a
    display attached.
  * How to use VNC + VGL to simulate a display connected to any GPU you have in
    your machine.
  * And Finally, how to run CARLA in this environment

This tutorial was tested in Ubuntu 16.04 and using NVIDIA 384.11 drivers.

## Preliminaries

A few things need to be working in your server before. Latest NVIDIA Drivers,
OpenGL, VirtualGL(VGL), TurboVNC 2.11.

<h4>NVIDIA Drivers</h4>

Download and install [NVIDIA-drivers][nvidialink] with typical tutorials.

[nvidialink]: http://www.nvidia.es/Download/index.aspx

<h4>OpenGL</h4>

Openg GL is necessary for Virtual GL. Normally OpenGL can be installed through
apt.

    sudo apt-get install freeglut3-dev mesa-utils

<h4>VGL</h4>

Follow this tutorial and install vgl:
[Installing VGL](https://virtualgl.org/vgldoc/2_2_1/#hd004001)

<h4>TurboVNC</h4>

Follow the tutorial below to install TurboVNC 2.11:
[Installing TurboVNC](https://cdn.rawgit.com/TurboVNC/turbovnc/2.1.1/doc/index.html#hd005001)

WARNING: Take care on which VNC you install as it may not be compatible with
Unreal. The one above was the only one that worked for me.

<h4>Extra Packages</h4>

These extra packages were necessary to make unreal to work.

    sudo apt install x11-xserver-utils libxrandr-dev

<h4>Configure your X</h4>

You must generate a X compatible with your nvdia and compatible to run without
display. For that, the following command worked:

    sudo nvidia-xconfig -a --use-display-device=None --virtual=1280x1024

## Emulating The Virtual Display

Run your own Xorg. Here I use number 7, but it could be labeled with any free
number

    sudo nohup Xorg :7 &

Run an auxiliary remote VNC-Xserver. This will create a virtual display "8".

    /opt/TurboVNC/bin/vncserver :8

If everything is working fine the following command should run smoothly.

    DISPLAY=:8 vglrun -d :7.0 glxinfo

Note. This will run glxinfo on Xserver 7, device 0. This means you are selecting
the GPU 0 on your machine. To run on other GPU, such as GPU 1 run:

    DISPLAY=:8 vglrun -d :7.1 glxinfo

<h4>Extra</h4>

If you want disable the need of sudo when creating the 'nohup Xorg' go to the
'/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config' file and change 'allowed_users=console' to
'allowed_users=anybody'

It may be needed to stop all Xorg servers before running nohup Xorg. The command
for that could change depending on your system. Generally for Ubuntu 16.04 you
should use:

    sudo service lightdm stop

## Running CARLA

Now, finally, to run CARLA on a certain gpu_number placed in a certain
$CARLA_PATH, run.

    DISPLAY=:8 vglrun -d :7.<gpu_number> $CARLA_PATH/CarlaUE4/Binaries/Linux/CarlaUE4