nvidia driver slowing xfce desktop selection box and icons showing

egregor · 09-02-2009, 03:14 PM

After I configured my nvidia card (96.43.13 driver) in my slack 13 huge-smp system, xfce desktop selection box became very slow and resource consuming and when I switched to desktop from for ex. firefox the icons delayed to show up (maybe more than 1 sec!!). The other aplications that like games and KDE ran OK.
Using other distros (sabayon) I don't have this.

What could be the source of the problem? Later I will try with another kernel and report.

Slackware is so great.
Thanks

Chuck56 · 09-02-2009, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by egregor

After I configured my nvidia card (96.43.13 driver) in my slack 13 huge-smp system, xfce desktop selection box became very slow and resource consuming and when I switched to desktop from for ex. firefox the icons delayed to show up (maybe more than 1 sec!!).

You should only run the huge kernel to troubleshoot issues. It has most option already compiled into the kernel which makes it bigger (it is called huge!) so it occupies more memory. You might also be experiencing a disk cache issue which would make your system slower.

Try to switching to the generic-smp kernel. You'll need to run mkinitrd... to install an init tree. It will only load those modules your system needs. Don't forget to update lilo.conf and re-run lilo too.

rworkman · 09-02-2009, 04:28 PM

Sounds like the compositing issue with ARGB visuals - see CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT

allend · 09-03-2009, 09:51 AM

From CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT

Quote:

If you notice Xfce's Terminal and perhaps some other applications being drawn
very slowly in X, then you should try explicitly disabling the Composite
extension in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, or set XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 in your
environment prior to starting X. For more information on this, see:
http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2792

From Robby Workman in http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2792

Quote:

David and I just had a chat with Olivier in #xfce, and he advised that this is
essentially a user configuration problem. If the Composite extension is
enabled in xorg.conf, then Terminal will use ARGB32 window even if the
compositor is disabled in Xfce, moving or resizing ARGB32 is slow [if you don't
have hardware accelerated rendering.

From Olivier Fourdan in http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2792

Quote:

Actually, these are different things. XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 instructs Xlib
not to advertise ARGB visuals. A compositor can be used even when without ARGB
(ie when XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS is set), and (technically) nothing would
prevent an application from using ARGB visuals without a compositor (although
the use of ARGB visuals without a compositor will unlikely produce the expected
result, ie transparency

Let's not forget that the embedded compositor in xfwm4 can be enabled/disabled
on the fly without restarting, but the visual use by applications cannot be
changed that easily.

It would be better IMHO not to use ARGB in that case anyway.

From /usr/doc/NVIDIA_GLX-1.0/html/appendix-s.html

Quote:

This driver supports OpenGL rendering to 32-bit ARGB windows when the AddARGBGLXVisuals X config file option is enabled

I use the nvidia 96.43.13 driver, and I need to add

Code:

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

to the device section for the videocard in my xorg.conf to enable compositing. I do not see any problems in xfce.
Perhaps the above xorg.conf option will work better for you.

egregor · 09-08-2009, 07:13 PM

Hi. I read the nvidia manual, the bugzilla link and CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT.
Then I tested all these options and its combinations (nvidia-xconfig --no-composite, addargbglxvisuals, the environment variable one, ...), however it all gave the same result.
I perceived if there is some window behind the one being resized instead of the desktop area, the rendering is fast.

Thanks

allend · 09-08-2009, 08:01 PM

Please post your xorg.conf.

egregor · 09-08-2009, 10:26 PM

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder63) Thu Jun 25 18:57:07 PDT 2009

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
# Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "0"
# Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

egregor · 09-08-2009, 10:27 PM

I omitted the fonts section. It was created by nvidia with little modifications.

And I forgot to say in earlier posts, these new tests were made using 2.6.29.6 generic smp kernel.

My PC specs are modest however without binary nvidia runs fast xfce: amd 32bits 3000+, 1GB ram, geforce mx 4000.

allend · 09-09-2009, 06:27 AM

Have you tried with these settings:

Quote:

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"

and this section removed or commented out

Quote:

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

and without XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1 set in the environment?

This is what works for me.

egregor · 09-14-2009, 01:21 AM

Yes. I tried it all. I got to try now using the non-smp kernel.
With compiz it works nice! grrr

Thanks

mkoco · 12-12-2009, 11:34 AM

Was this problem ever resolved? I have the same exact issue on GeForce 3.