Run Java AWT/Swing GUI app in headless server

I have a gateway application that comes up with a login dialog and then a GUI window. I will be running this app on a co-located server without a display. I need to interact with the dialog only when logging in and perhaps to check out the main GUI occasionally. The server is Debian 5.0.

The only ideas I have so far are:

1. Tunnel an X session to my desktop for logging in but I'm not sure what will happen if the X session disconnected (ie, I reboot my desktop, etc..)

2. Try to instantiate/launch the app from a wrapper Java application that can hopefully fill out the login dialog or login directly however I would most likely lose the ability to see the m开发者_StackOverflow社区ain GUI this way and other side effects might occur.

It's too bad this particular app was written in Swing and doesn't provide a command-line only mode or daemon mode.

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You can run a VNC server on the machine where the application runs. Then you can connect to the virtual X-server at any time to interact with the user interface.

I don't have a Debian system nearby, but on Ubuntu there is a package vnc4server that provides the features you need.