Getting Xvfb to start upon booting system in Ubuntu Maverick

I'm trying to get Xvfb to run when the system starts up on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick), but it's not working. In /etc/rc.local, I have the following:

/root/start_xvfb.sh >> /var/log/start_xvfb.log 2>&1
exit 0

And in /root/start_xvfb.sh I have:

#!/bin/sh -e
startx -- `which Xvfb` :0 -screen 0 1024x768x24 &
exit 0

After rebooting the machine, the log file (/var/log/start_xvfb.log) contains:

[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic, removing from list!
^M
waiting for X server to shut down
^M

Given that content in the log file, it seems like the call to "startx — `which Xvfb` :0 -screen 0 1024x768x24" is being made, but the process is killed soon thereafter.

I want to start Xvfb on boot because I need to run Firefox on a remote server that doesn't have a monitor display. If I run /etc/rc.local after SSH'ing to the remote machine, Xvfb starts without a problem and I can launch Firefox via "firefox –display=:0 &". If I try to run Firefox using that command without first starting Xvfb, I get the message "Error: cannot open display: :0".

Note that I am not trying to actually see the display on my local workstation. I want the application to display on the remote machine's (virtual, in memory) display.

Any ideas why X server is shutting down on the remote machine immediately after it starts? Is there a better way to have Xvfb start upon system boot?

Thanks in advance for any help.