Running LabVIEW on a Linux server and running the GUI on a remote machine

[Zence]

Is there any known way to run LabVIEW on a Linux server with just a command line interface for testing, but be able to remote in with a Linux or Windows machine and run the GUI remotely?

[RTSLVU]

I think the closest you are going to get is a compiled LabVIEW executable using the built in web server and "Remote Panels".

You can see the front panel and operate it remotely through a web browser.

[BertMcMahan · Accepted solution]

You could simply make two programs- one that runs on the Linux box and one that runs on Windows. You wouldn't need to remote in, you'd just open a TCP/IP connection and send messages that way. It's more complicated but it's very flexible.

[rolfk]

Haven't tried it myself in a long time but LabVIEW on Linux using XWindows for its graphical UI, it should be relatively straight forward to do remote access by opening an XWindows session to the Linux box. Just install an XWindows Server on Windows, configure your Linux box to redirect the XWindows DISPLAY to your X Server and you should be able to view the LabVIEW program on the X Server.

There might be however a problem starting up the LabVIEW application without the X Server to which the DISPLAY is sent to, being active.

Bert's solution with two separate programs communicating over TCP/IP explicitly (or through VI Server over TCP/IP) would be definitely my approach if I was to develop such a system.

[Barionics]

Has anyone tried running LabVIEW on Linux using the WINE Windows emulator?  Not tried it myself yet, but it would be interesting to know if it works.  Of course this would give a graphical panel whcih is not what is asked for.  

[rolfk]

I tried it back in LabVIEW 5.x days. It was possible then with a few minor non-blocking issues. But LabVIEW's OS interface has since grown very considerably with things like multi-monitor support, .Net and many other things and it definitely didn't seem very possible around LabVIEW 8.0 days. Not sure Wine has since catched up on that front enough. Their target is not to support EDA applications like LabVIEW but mostly games and office applications. I did try it out regularly back in those days when I was a little bit involved in Wine development and even provided a few patches to Wine, not necessarily LabVIEW related. But after around LabVIEW 7.0, which came out with a LabVIEW for Linux version, the desire from most people able to figure this out has dwindled into non-existence. Yes installation of LabVIEW for Linux on other Linux distributions than RedHat, Suse and Scientific Linux always has been a bit of a hassle but compared with getting Wine installed and correctly setup, this always seemed the smaller of the two evils. 

[Bob_Schor]

It almost makes me think of LabVIEW RT, where you run LabVIEW code on a remote system running a Real-Time OS (typically without a Front Panel) and connect to it with a Host machine running LabVIEW.  A virtue is that the Remote (RT) system has really good control of CPU time and cycles (no Windows Updates to interfere).

Bob Schor

[RTSLVU]

How about this?

If you are running LabVIEW on Linux then wouldn't any remote X-server application like Cygwin/X  work?

As I recall Cygwin is not just a remote desktop client like VNC, you are actually running an X-Windows session on the MS-Windows machine and the Linux box can be headless.