I have a very basic need, to set up an external graphics card to my headless LINUX server - that only has USB2 ports - so that we can get a basic graphics console.
Does anybody know of a commercial-grade external graphics card that can be used for such? No requirement for high-resolution, accelerated graphics, etc.
XGA ( 1024x768 pixels , 4:3 aspect ratio) will do.
AFAIK you can only do eGPUs with thunderbolt and nothing else? This is because thunderbolt interface is directly linked with a PCIe lane unlike a regular USB2. I dont think the USB2 even has enough bandwidth for such a use case.
Maybe someone here can correct me.
You may also try to change your CPU with one with an iGPU SoC if your motherboard has a display output.
Thanks for your prompt reply. My servers use the I7-7700 processor, which has the HD 630 integrated graphics. But it has no external video ports. Since the headless scheme is by design and my company has a strong preference for this I am limited to the only type of external port available, the USB2 ports.
As I mentioned before, there is no interest in performance, only the ability to bring up a graphical X-based console for the Ubuntu servers. If you or others have recommendations I’m all ears.
Regards
Pedro
commercial grade, no. however years ago i used to stick USB 2 DVI dongles, aka USB2 graphics cards on to computers to add second screens. was only good for 2d. sounds like thats what you need
Is the console needed to be local for your X applications? If not, and the machine is preferred to remain headless, then you can use X forwarding over SSH to use your applications remotely. For a slick interface for X which is a bit like RDP, there is X2Go.
Thank you, I already use X forwarding over ssh when I have access to the host device. This is for those times when out of band management is needed, when the host device is inaccessible.