Sounds like I should be looking at BLAT.

I imagine the graphicless server will carry on running after the --postexec - the GUI one does - but I've never tried it out for real. I think your method is the only way to "interact" with the graphicless server, which is why I don't use it. The lack of interaction and the lack of feedback just seems to make it too difficult to use, unless you get into the high level of automation (and complexity) like on the mosehansen server.