Slack 10.1 nvidia gf4 graphic acceleration issues
 

Hey, I'm having problems with 3D apps (games) on my 10.1 installation. I compiled 2.6.11.3 and everything is working fine, except when I play games I get about 6-7 fps, as if there were no hardware acceleration.

According to proc/drivers/nvidia/agp/status, AGP = Disabled due to an initialization failure. I have agpgart compiled as a module, and disabled in rc.modules. I'm using the nvidia driver's AGP capabilities. (Option "NvAgp" "1") in card section of xorg.conf. (Yes my motherboard's chipset is supported, I read the nvidia documentation.)

I have the latest nvidia drivers from nvidia's site and my card is a Geforce 4 mx420.

I receive no errors during boot, or in any logs, except that proc says AGP is disabled. Even when I use the agpgart module and disable "NvAgp" in xorg.conf, the games play very slowly.

Any ideas? Any other information you would like? (I have all required packages installed, such as SDL)

~Dav

what is listed as the "Driver" in your xorg.conf? 'nividia' or 'nv' ? nvidia is the accelerated driver and will have to have a kernel module compiled for your kernel and have the nvidia-glx package installed.

I'm not sure you won't need you AGP driver installed in your kernel, or undisabled.

THe problem apears to be that you're not using any hardware acceleration at all.

Xorg.conf is set to use the "nvidia" driver, and I have DRI commented out, as the documentation suggests. (There was no glcore, which it mentions to comment out..) I also added the glx option, like it said to do. I have specified the correct amount of ram to use as well.

I disabled the NvAgp and now have agpgart running correctly. (sis_agp loaded alongside it, since my mobo chipset is SiS 735)

I do have the most recent nvidia driver installed, as I mentioned above, however I never downloaded any nvidia_glx package? Perhaps that is the issue? (Everything worked fine before I recompiled updated everything via slapt-get, and upgraded to 2.6.11.3.)

It's a very strange issue, as everything else is working correctly and I am receiving no errors or warnings during boot, or in any logs. (AGP is now "Enabled" according to /proc, after re-compiling 2.6.11.3 with agpgart as a module instead of built-in, and disabling NvAgp)

~Dav

nvidia-glx is the xorg / xfree driver for userspace, it is required and probably your problem at least in part.

Alright, I will download that package and see if it fixes the issue. It just bugs me that I could run games fine before, and now I can't.

Another bit of information which is perhaps useful, when running "neverball," I receive the message
"neverball: /usr/lib/libGL.so.1: no version information available (required by neverball)"
And then the game runs, but slowly just as all other 3D apps.

Edit: Evidentally libGL.so.1 is part of the nvidia driver package. (There is also a libGL.so.1.0-7167 file in the same directory, corresponding to the version number of the nvidia drivers.)

also take a look at " /var/log/Xorg.0.log "
it contains warnings/errors from X and is many times helpfull .

egag

Thanks egag, I checked the log and found no errors, although I noticed that X loads a module called "fb." Is that frame buffer support? If so, could it be conflicting?

Well I discovered the problem, and everything's workin' great again.

I re-read a good portion of the Nvidia documentation and learned that problems with shared libraries (such as /usr/lib/libGL.so.x.y.z and other stuff that comes with the nvidia driver) often are the cause of slow-running OpenGL apps. I checked everything mentioned in the documentation about it but found no discrepencies.

That's when I remembered the SDL. I installed 4 packages manually, with "neverball", which comprised the sdl 1.2.6 release. Slapt-get, which I use to keep up to date, installed a single "sdl-1.2.8..." package, comprising the entire library, thus not removing/upgrading the 1.2.6. I uninstalled the 1.2.6 packages and re-installed the 1.2.8 from slapt-get, and everything's A-OK.

~Dav