Ask HN: How to capture screen output from a virtualized container?

2 points by alanz1223 9y ago ↗ HN

Please excuse me if this post is really ignorant. Lately i've wondered, how, if its possible, to capture the screen output from a docker image running on a GUI-less debian distro. Is this even possible? How would the process work under the hood?

I am assuming that the app running inside the docker image needs access to the native GUI libraries for rendering, etc... Are these libraries availabla even on the GUI less linux distros? From there on I am completely lost at how I would actually run the image and capture the screen.

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[dead] iofj 9y ago ↗

I can't do it with docker, but with virtualbox you can configure it to be a VNC server, then have a VNC recorder connect to it. You can use that either to record the screen or even do a macro-like functionality where keystrokes would be sent in as well.

Fun thing is, there's nothing preventing you from connecting 2 VNC clients to the server, so you can watch as well, or use another VNC client to interact with the VM while the other one's recording ...

It may require some custom code to make it happen, but it's open source. Message me if you're serious about it.