You can’t run the java-based server headless. However the Breakout distribution also includes a nodejs-based server which you could run headlessly. See this page on the wiki for details on running the node server.

I honestly haven’t tried running the node server on Linux since my linux skills are definitely sub par. It works great on Mac OS X, but it is not possible to run node-serialport on Windows (see this thread). I would think it would run on Linux. Try installing WAF. If that doesn’t work I can look into alternatives for a headless version of the server although it may be a few days before I can get to it.

You shouldn’t have to download socket.io and node-serialport. You need to install node and npm (node package manager). NPM will handle the downloads and installation of node modules automatically. See these instructions for Debian

Then, after you have installed npm (make sure your paths are set if the installer did not set them for you), navigate to Breakout/node_server/ and type: “npm install serialport”. Then after that finishes, type: “npm install socket.io”.Google ‘installing node.js and npm linux’ if this is not working.

Also if you get all that installed you’ll have to update the serial port of your IOBoard on line 30 server.js file. Also note line 12 of server.js. Set this to true if you want to connect to the server from multiple clients. At some point I hope to find someone more familiar with node.js to help make this a bit easier to use.