Got the program built and installed, but when starting the program, it just freezes and locks up X. I can't get to console or anything. I have to hit the on/off button (laptop).
I tried it twice since the initial attempt. First, I just let the program sit for about 45 minutes. There was no disk activity that I could see. Second time, I tried starting from xterm to watch for any output. Nothing. Just the program freezing up and then X not responding.

Ideas/help?

Video drivers? Google Earth needs OpenGL.

I had a similar problem on my laptop and updating to the latest ATI proprietary driver fixed it.

I've tried vesa driver and sis driver. Neither works.Some info:

OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.1 Mesa 7.0.2)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

please post the output of:

glxinfo | grep rendering

The latest version of GE seems to have issues for lots of people.
We've got a build script for the latest release ready to push out at SlackBuilds.org, and we added a note in the README about it. As far as I know, there's not any good solution. It works fine for some people, and crashes for others, and crashes X for still others.

glxinfo |grep rendering
direct rendering: No (If you want to find out why, try setting LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose)

Where do I set this?



Thanks Robby. I do have it on the Windows system that came on the laptop. Guess I'll just use it

I had to download the previous version because my installed Google Earth (4.3) was slow as hell and sometimes crashed, even though direct rendering was on. With 4.2 it is working nicely as before the upgrade. If you want to try this version, go to http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html#no_redirect, choose "English (US)" even if you are not located in the US and: voilà - there appears a link to the 4.2 setup file.

The lack of direct rendering is the reason why Googleearth causes X freeze. Enabling direct rendering should sort it out.
This thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...in-x11-402003/
is a sticky in this forum and discusses how to enable direct rendering.

Yes, GE is definitely causing a few problems in several distros.

When I was googling about (irony) trying to fix my problem, I read of several folk getting round the issues by downgrading video-drivers and/or google earth.

dri and glx is enabled in my xorg.conf. I tried running googleearth as root and it also crashed X.
I then tried this as user and root:
started X and then started googleearth. Immediately, I switched to a console (previously logged in), and started top. In a few seconds both X and Googleearth stopped showing. I then checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log and found this at the end (tail):
$ tail Xorg.0.log
3: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions//libglx.so [0xb7b49be6]
4: X [0x814700e]
5: X(Dispatch+0x2cb) [0x808699b]
6: X(main+0x496) [0x806ddb6]
7: /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0xb7cc9390]
8: X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x20d) [0x806d0e1]

Fatal server error:
Caught signal 11. Server aborting


I got that with both root and regular user

since glxinfo says you have no direct rendering, you really should not have it. make sure that

glxinfo | grep rendering

gives "yes" and try googleearth then. My system experiences the same problem if I start googleearth without dri.

You are right. It says NO.
I checked the sticky, and followed the first couple of pages and the last couple of pages. I didn't really want to read all of them, but looks like I may have to

Thanks!

I have run googleearth 4.0.2693.0 in Slackware 12.0.
I never ran dri in that install.
I never had problems with googleearth.

It freezes X completely.

All newer versions of googleearth also freeze X when I install them in Slack12.2 and try to run them.

However, I can run Slack12.2 then go back into the partition with my old Slackware 12.0 files and run googleearth 4.0.2693.0 directly there from the command line it works fine.

Google Earth 5 crashes and I have OpenGL direct rendering enabled.

Intel 945GME

david@host:~# glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes

My OpenGL extensions:

OpenGL extensions:
GL_ARB_depth_texture, GL_ARB_draw_buffers, GL_ARB_fragment_program,
GL_ARB_fragment_shader, GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample,
GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_occlusion_query, GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object,
GL_ARB_point_parameters, GL_ARB_point_sprite, GL_ARB_shader_objects,
GL_ARB_shading_language_100, GL_ARB_shading_language_120, GL_ARB_shadow,
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression,
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add,
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar,
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat,
GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two, GL_ARB_texture_rectangle,
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object,
GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_vertex_shader, GL_ARB_window_pos,
GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra, GL_EXT_blend_color,
GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate,
GL_EXT_blend_logic_op, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract,
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint, GL_EXT_cull_vertex, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array,
GL_EXT_convolution, GL_EXT_copy_texture, GL_EXT_draw_range_elements,
GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_fog_coord, GL_EXT_histogram,
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays, GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil,
GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_pixel_buffer_object, GL_EXT_point_parameters,
GL_EXT_polygon_offset, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color,
GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_shadow_funcs, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap,
GL_EXT_subtexture, GL_EXT_texture, GL_EXT_texture3D,
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp,
GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine,
GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic,
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_rectangle,
GL_EXT_texture_sRGB, GL_EXT_vertex_array,
GL_3DFX_texture_compression_FXT1, GL_APPLE_client_storage,
GL_APPLE_packed_pixels, GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate,
GL_ATI_separate_stencil, GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip,
GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate,
GL_MESA_pack_invert, GL_MESA_ycbcr_texture, GL_MESA_window_pos,
GL_NV_blend_square, GL_NV_light_max_exponent, GL_NV_point_sprite,
GL_NV_texture_rectangle, GL_NV_texgen_reflection, GL_NV_vertex_program,
GL_NV_vertex_program1_1, GL_OES_read_format, GL_SGI_color_matrix,
GL_SGI_color_table, GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp,
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_SGIX_depth_texture,
GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays