Hi Andreas, sorry for not getting to your question sooner :( Ok, so as for starting a headless server so you can render on those nodes, you can certainly do that.

The general form of the command will be:

blender -b -noaudio -P ~/.config/blender/3.0/scripts/addons/crowdrender/cr_source/core/serv_int_start.py -- -t server_int_proc

Explanation

the first part starts Blender in background mode with no audio (on linux not specifying noaudio can cause errors).

the -P option tells Blender to load a script from the provided argument to this option. that script is what starts the headless server.

The script needs an option though. So we use -- to tell Blender to pass all the following options and arguments to python (otherwise blender will try to interpret them as its own and error).

-t tells the script the type of background service you want to run, which will be server_int_proc, or the headless server.

This should be enough for you to run a headless server. Turning this into a service on linux might be possible too if you research a little bit.

Also I've provided the contents of a recent bat script for windows. If you put this bat file in your user's startup directory, then each time the machine starts, it will start a headless server at logon time.

"%AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Blender\blender.lnk" -b -noaudio --factory-startup -P "%AppData%\Blender Foundation\Blender\3.0\scripts\addons\crowdrender\cr_source\core\serv_int_start.py" -- -t "server_int_proc"

This script assumes that the location of Blender is such that there is a shortcut to the executable in the start menu. This is the default for installing Blender with the .msi download from Blender.org.

It also assumes you installed Blender 3.0. You can change both of these though to suit your needs. The script is not licensed so you can do with it whatever you like.

Hope this helps and good luck!