This is a bit of an odd one.

I'd like to run stuff like bochs or vmware *without* needing
to start X first (I'll be connecting to the VMs using VNC).

Is there any way to get around the 'cannot open display'
error?

i.e. does anyone know of a 'null Xserver' for this kind of thing?

(Failing that, someone told me there was a way to reserve a second VTY
for use with a dedicated X sesion - seems like Vmware in particular tries
to connect to this as it boots) - how would you go about setting up
one of those?

Thanks a lot, sorry if this doesn't make sense.

-- 
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns