F17 Alpha RC4 Live, Mesa 8.0 and Nvidia GeForce 6200

kldixon · #1 26th February 2012, 12:04 PM

I am unable to get gnome-shell under Fedora 17 Alpha Live which drops into fallback mode through timeouts.
The rot sets in with the following in var/log/messages

Code:

Feb 24 10:39:33 localhost gnome-session[865]: WARNING: Session 'gnome' runnable check failed: Timed out

Or possibly earlier with

Code:

Feb 24 10:37:43 localhost livesys[516]: Adding live user [  OK  ]
Feb 24 10:37:44 localhost livesys[516]: ** WARNING **: Command line `dbus-launch --autolaunch=139b36777e910a8afabb5c5d00000078 --binary-syntax --close-stderr' exited with non-zero exit status 1: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.\n
Feb 24 10:37:44 localhost livesys[516]: ** WARNING **: Command line `dbus-launch --autolaunch=139b36777e910a8afabb5c5d00000078 --binary-syntax --close-stderr' exited with non-zero exit status 1: Autolaunch error: X11 initialization failed.\n

although Fedora 16 Live has similar reports and gnome-shell works fine there.
The runnable check seems to be /usr/libexec/gnome-session-check-accelerated which waits several seconds then outputs, on error

Code:

nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 30
nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 30
nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 55
nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 56
nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 59
nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 58
nvfx_screen_get_param:95 -  Warning: unknown PIPE_CAP 30

and returns 0.
The same command on Fedora 16 Live has a small delay and returns 0.
lspci gives for the graphics chip

Code:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV44A [GeForce 6200] (rev a1)

glxinfo gives

Code:

OpenGL vendor string: nouveau
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on NV4A
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.0
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

and I think this is the important thing as Fedora 16 Live glxinfo reports

Code:

OpenGL vendor string: nouveau
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on NV4A
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.11
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

and a fully up to date Fedora 15 reports

Code:

OpenGL vendor string: nouveau
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on NV4A
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.11.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

As an aside, which is reporting the right chip type; lspci with NV44A or Xorg with NV4A? This has been the state of affairs for a long time.
Xorg.0.log contains

Code:

[   473.750] (--) NOUVEAU(0): Chipset: "NVIDIA NV4a"[   474.492] (II) SELinux: Disabled by boolean
...
[   475.522] (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer
[   475.523] (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_INTEL_swap_event
[   475.524] (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_SGI_swap_control and GLX_MESA_swap_control
[   475.524] (II) AIGLX: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap backed by buffer objects
[   475.527] (II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized nouveau
[   475.528] (II) GLX: Initialized DRI2 GL provider for screen 0
[   475.552] (II) NOUVEAU(0): NVEnterVT is called.
[   475.558] (II) NOUVEAU(0): Setting screen physical size to 507 x 380
[   475.558] resize called 1920 1440

which I think implies I have hardware acceleration.

F15 and F16 Live both work fine in gnome-shell.

Is my processor just too slow (650MHz Athlon) and there is no hope, or is the resolution too high, or is it a bug in Mesa 8.0 or something else?

kldixon · #2 28th February 2012, 12:11 PM

I thought I would look on the mesa site, http://www.mesa3d.org, for some hints on what is going wrong and found a few.

First, wrt the NV4A, NV44A issue, they are both right
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeNames#NV40

The unknown PIPE_CAPs reported by gnome-session-check-accelerated are defined in
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mes...pe/p_defines.h

Code:

PIPE_CAP_MAX_STREAM_OUTPUT_BUFFERS = 30,
PIPE_CAP_MAX_STREAM_OUTPUT_SEPARATE_COMPONENTS = 55,
PIPE_CAP_MAX_STREAM_OUTPUT_INTERLEAVED_COMPONENTS = 56,
PIPE_CAP_TGSI_CAN_COMPACT_VARYINGS = 58, /* temporary */
PIPE_CAP_TGSI_CAN_COMPACT_CONSTANTS = 59, /* temporary */

and used in
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/mes.../nvfx_screen.c by nvfx_screen_get_param.

The mesa home page reports that Mesa 8.0.1 was released on 16 Feb and in
http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/p...?packageID=184
mesa-8.0.1-2.fc17 has been built.
So I go to "Nightly live composes (Fedora 17 branched)"
http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/
(Thank you, tox, for the link)
and there is a build for 26 Feb
Fedora-17-Nightly-20120226.09-i686-Live-desktop.iso
I download it in anticipation, boot it up and... no difference. It is still using mesa 8.0 and worse, the gnome-session DEBUG(+) messages have been turned off.
I guess I must drum my fingers on the desk a while longer.

**AdamW** · #3 29th February 2012, 03:51 AM

i suspect GDM just isn't waiting long enough for the session-is-accelerated check to return and assuming it failed. the ultimate bug is whatever's causing the delay in session-is-accelerated, which sounds like something to report as a bug against xorg-x11-drv-nouveau .

I suspect if you manually run 'gnome-shell --replace' from a console, shell will show up and work; you could try that. if that works, either just do it each time you start up, or somehow short-circuit the gnome-session-is-accelerated check to return success quickly (by symlinking it to /bin/true, for instance).

kldixon · #4 2nd March 2012, 02:48 PM

I tried running 'gnome-shell --replace' from a terminal and gnome-shell did come up. However, you have to keep the terminal around, even if you append an & to the command line, and gnome-shell is just too slow to be usable in the live cd.

Interestingly, on one occasion of booting the live cd, I got the usual timeouts and the popup saying 'Oh no, something bad has happened' followed by the popup saying Gnome3 has had a problem, only to eventually have gnome-shell come up.

I agree that the problem is probably related to whatever is causing the delay in gnome-session-check-accelerated which is why I reported the unknown PIPE_CAP warnings. Clearly, there is some component not in sync with another, which is why I was hoping Mesa 8.0.1 might resolve the issue. I do not want to generate unnecessary noise in bugzilla and was going to wait until Mesa 8.0.1 made it into the live cd.

From the Mesa 8.0 release notes:-
Mesa 8.0 is a new development release. People who are concerned with stability and reliability should stick with a previous release or wait for Mesa 8.0.1.

The 3D driver, nvfx, is under Mesa. Is it not in /usr/lib/dri/nouveau_dri.so and so should I not report against mesa-dri-drivers? Or is xorg-x11-drv-nouveau used as a general repository for related bugs?

**AdamW** · #5 2nd March 2012, 10:50 PM

Hum - I wouldn't expect slow performance on your hardware.

I wonder if you're actually being hit by a bug in the Alpha kernel which causes extremely slow general performance on some hardware? That could explain all the symptoms. You might try a current nightly - https://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/al...poses/desktop/ - which should have a newer kernel, and see if it behaves better.

kldixon · #6 5th March 2012, 05:40 PM

I tried Fedora-17-Nightly-20120304.07-i686-Live-desktop.iso which includes Mesa 8.0.1 and a patched kernel, but there is no significant difference.
Sometimes I get 'Oh no! Something has gone wrong.' sometimes followed by 'Gnome 3 Failed to Load' sometimes followed by the shell and sometimes by fallback mode and I get various timeouts in messages.
gnome-session-check-accelerated no longer outputs the 'unknown PIPE_CAPS' but glxinfo does as does gnome-shell --replace.
Some things seem to be statically linked and some dynamically
At least glx-utils has not been re-built with Mesa 8.0.1, glx-utils-7.10-6.20101028.fc17.i686.rpm
I think I will retire and wait for a few more extensive changes.