`xvfb-run` doesn't support `--auto-display`

[Boris Petrov]

`xvfb` is at version `2:21.1.3-2ubuntu2` which is the latest one. However, `xvfb-run -h` doesn't show the `--auto-display` argument and running `xvfb-run --auto-display ls` leads to `xvfb-run: unrecognized option '--auto-display'`. This is strange because in Arch Linux, the same `xvfb-run` version does support `--auto-display`. On Ubuntu one must use `--auto-servernum` because of that but that has been deprecated for quite a while now.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The script isn't part of upstream xorg-server, where did you see that --auto-servernum has been deprecated?

The script for Debian (and such Ubuntu) is on
https://salsa.debian.org/xorg-team/xserver/xorg-server/-/blob/debian-unstable/debian/local/xvfb-run

it seems fedora also has a copy which they patched some years ago to mark that option as deprecated and add auto-display instead, unsure what was the motivation behind the change though
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/xorg-x11-server/c/9e2c5679

[Boris Petrov (boris-petrov)]

Hi, thanks for the response! I'm also not sure how this package works, where is its source, where is the upstream, etc. However, as I said, on Arch Linux `auto-servernum` is marked as deprecated. Googling `auto-display` leads to some information (also on other distros):

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/65039
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1787684

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

what's the problem here? note that fedora forked xvfb-run from Debian nearly 14 years ago, before

https://salsa.debian.org/xorg-team/xserver/xorg-server/-/commit/81e2cbb3dea9ca293d22a3dfc56724513350cfbb

which, aiui, is another way of avoiding clashes when creating the server instance

[Boris Petrov (boris-petrov)]

There is no "problem" per se. It's just that Ubuntu's version of `xvfb-run` is not really compatible/consistent with the one in other distros. Some distros have deprecated `--auto-servernum` in favor of a different setting `--auto-display` which I guess does something "better". I'm just saying that Ubuntu's package could be updated to be more in-line with others.