Perhaps this already exists, and if so I’d love to know how to enable it. I recently discovered the web server setting in JBidwatcher, and it would be really cool if I could run the app in a quiet web server only mode, that displays no UI. I run my own linux server, which doesn’t have any form of X installed, but is just running email, a web server, etc. It would be really cool if I could run JBidwatcher on this box, and then use the web interface to interact with it from my desktop. Then I wouldn’t have to leave my desktop running overnight just to allow JBidwatcher to snipe auctions that end late at night.

Even better would be if I could run the full GUI interface on my desktop, but have it talking to and updating the web server version running on my linux box, but I understand that’s quite a bit more. It seems like it should be fairly easy though to run the app in a quiet mode on the command line without any GUI.

+1 for headless server install with web interface! I too have a Linux server which I would love to run this trick bit of software on.

In the meantime, has anyone got any idea of how we might be able to do this with the current setup?

BTW thanks for a neat bit of cross-platform freeware! You rock!

Greetings,
JBidwatcher currently requires a windowing system of some sort; I haven’t really addressed fixing this. I’ve faced down several people who want to take JBidwatcher and essentially turn it into a free sniping back-end for a web service, so I’m in no hurry to make it easier for them to do it.

At this time the only sniping web service I recommend is Gixen and I’m considering providing JBidwatcher integration with Gixen for folks who want a web-service backup for their snipes.

I understand the desire, though, and it’s something that’s perpetually in the back of my mind as a way to separate the front and back ends more completely. I also should spend time improving the XSLT I use to convert the auction save file XML into a web page. There’s a lot more that could be done there, AJAXy, and stuff. I’m spending a lot of that time on ‘My JBidwatcher’, instead, though, because I like doing web app development. :)

— Morgan Schweers, CyberFOX!

p.s. Thanks very much for the kind words!

Keep in mind that on a linux without X (or limited X installation) you can always install a vncserver , and then redirect the jbidwatcher output to the vncserver and access it from a remote vncclient.

Regards
Albert