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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-22T17:25:14+00:00

I have written a server in Java that allows clients connected to it to

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I have written a server in Java that allows clients connected to it to control the mouse and keyboard of the computer. To do this it uses the java.awt.Robot class.

I need this server to run in the background and start automatically. The first OS I am tackling this problem on is Debian based (Ubuntu 11.04) and a daemon seems like the obvious choice. The problem is that when the daemon is started during boot or during the installation of my debian package (whose postinst script starts it using /etc/init.d/pc-remote-server start) I get this error:

java.awt.AWTException: headless environment
    at java.awt.Robot.<init>(Robot.java:97)
    at com.se.pcremote.server.CommandExecuter.<init>(CommandExecuter.java:72)
    at com.se.pcremote.server.PCRemoteServer.<init>(PCRemoteServer.java:215)
    at com.se.pcremote.server.PCRemoteServer.main(PCRemoteServer.java:122)

Is there any way I can use the java.awt.Robot class from within a daemon process? Could I spawn a secondary process from the daemon process that is not a ‘headless environment’? Or is there a better way for me to get a ‘service’ like result that does not have this limitation?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Alright, after doing some more research and trying some more options here is what I came up with:

    Can I use java.awt.Robot from within a daemon? No.

    Further down in my question I elaborated a little:

    Is there any way I can use the java.awt.Robot class from within a daemon process? No. As above.

    Could I spawn a secondary process from the daemon process that is not a ‘headless environment’? Not that I could figure out. It was going to be a lot of work if I did do it anyway.

    Or is there a better way for me to get a ‘service’ like result that does not have this limitation? Yes! Use the desktop environment! In my case since I was using Ubuntu the desktop environment was Gnome. Gnome has a Startup Applications feature that runs off .desktop files on a global and per-user basis as described here. They also provide information on the structure of these .desktop files here. I added a .desktop file to /etc/xdg/autostart (the global autostart folder) that ran my Java ‘service’ and it worked like a treat.

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