Blender 2.8: "Unable to open a display" by the rendering on the background (Eevee)

Archive Blender Development
23

If you’re using NVIDIA GPUs then you should simply be able to fake an attached monitor in the xorg.conf file by using something like

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "none"
    Option         "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0"
    Option         "CustomEDID" "DFP-0: /etc/X11/dell-3008wfp.bin"
EndSection

Where the file /etc/X11/dell-3008wfp.bin needs to contain a dump of a real monitor’s EDID information. We use this on our GPU nodes to make them think there is a monitor there, no need for hardware plugs.