Oolite Bulletins

Okay, as stated in another thread, Oolite has been not working on my Linux installation, much to my dismay. So, as Smivs suggested, I am asking for help.

Problems:
CTD if Shaders are on, or if the game goes into full screen.
CTD when the game's window is resized.
CTDs infrequently, seemingly at random, and with no known reason, no errors in log.

My diagnosis: Graphics card problem, probably incorrectly recognized.

My hardware:
Dell Inspiron N5040

VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
My software:
Oolite 1.76.1 64-bit on Ubuntu 12.04 with Linux 3.2.0 64-bit. GNUstep version unknown, although I am working to find out. OpenGL renderer is version 2.1.0.
I installed Oolite the standard way, using the .run file downloaded from the Oolite website, it is installed in my home folder only to make OXP installation easier.

I can provide more information on request.

hi there,

Oolite by apt-get/Softwarecenter or by tar.bz2 from here? Since Ubuntu is known to patch almost anything to twist it to their liking it might be interesting if one or the other behaves differently.

Another thought... what happens when you launch Oolite from a failsafe xterm window session instead of unity. (3D hw exclusively for the game). Any message to terminal? What does OOlite's lastlog say

Last but not least which version of OpenGl is Ubuntu shipping? glxinfo output could be handy, and does resizing with glxgears work?




Amah
---
running Oolite on a vanilla Gnu/Linux Debian testing here on a Dell Inspiron 1525 here, intel gfx, even full shadered rock stable.

Okay, I just replicated the windowed to fullscreen crash, and it reminded me of something I had forgotten... when Oolite crashes for me, be it the shaders, fullscreen, or the random crash, it's not just a CTD. The whole display manager (in my case LightDM) goes down. So, I switched to GDM, and it seems to work. I feel like an idiot. But, at least we now have a record on the OoBB that LightDM can make Oolite crash... so, if you're reading this and you have the same problems with Oolite on Ubuntu, it's probably worth trying GDM.

The GDM vs LightDM comparison also explains why Oolite works on Fedora 16, but not Ubuntu 12.04.

glad you were able to fix it!

just for the record slim as display manager works.

Amah wrote:

glad you were able to fix it!

just for the record slim as display manager works.

I think KDM works too, but I haven't tested it on there for a while.

That's some wild stuff right there. I wonder if this was the problem I was having in 12.04 right before I jumped to Mint. Anyway, you should mark the thread as solved .

In future, if you have continued problems, you might try adding the repository:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu
The hardware on my dimension seems to be fairly similar to your inspiron. I have a latitude with intel integrated graphics that needed this repo added before Oolite would work.

CommRLock78 wrote:

That's some wild stuff right there. I wonder if this was the problem I was having in 12.04 right before I jumped to Mint. Anyway, you should mark the thread as solved .

In future, if you have continued problems, you might try adding the repository:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu
The hardware on my dimension seems to be fairly similar to your inspiron. I have a latitude with intel integrated graphics that needed this repo added before Oolite would work.

Okay, marked it as solved.

I've had similar problems with Oolite on Ubuntu 10.04 and later, running GDM, but I guess a newer version fixed it. Which display manager does Linux Mint use these days? Maybe I should switch over sometime, if I don't like the new GNOME remix of Ubuntu (which I plan to use if it works).

I've added the repository you mentioned, and I'm in the progress of upgrading my packages. I'll report back if there are any changes in Oolite.

RyanHoots wrote:

Okay, marked it as solved.

I've had similar problems with Oolite on Ubuntu 10.04 and later, running GDM, but I guess a newer version fixed it. Which display manager does Linux Mint use these days? Maybe I should switch over sometime, if I don't like the new GNOME remix of Ubuntu (which I plan to use if it works).

I've added the repository you mentioned, and I'm in the progress of upgrading my packages. I'll report back if there are any changes in Oolite.

Mint 13 (I believe both MATE and Cinnamon edition) are using MDM, which is based off GDM v2.x, if I recall. I'm running the MATE edition on all three of my machines.
It probably won't hurt to add the repo and update as you did, I'm just a bit more cautious when doing things like that. There was a Mint developer who was very popular among the community that passed away recently and "fortune" on the Mint terminal has many quotes from him (his last name was Husse). Anyway, one of his quotes says, essentially "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't break it if you can't fix it." While I've noticed that adding the repo does in fact fix many problems with graphics-heavy applications, since it is cutting edge stuff, it will break your system once in a while (a very very rare occurrence indeed, but it does happen), particularly the libgl1-mesa driver - however, when things do go awry, they are fixed within a day or two .

CommRLock78 wrote:

RyanHoots wrote:

Okay, marked it as solved.

I've had similar problems with Oolite on Ubuntu 10.04 and later, running GDM, but I guess a newer version fixed it. Which display manager does Linux Mint use these days? Maybe I should switch over sometime, if I don't like the new GNOME remix of Ubuntu (which I plan to use if it works).

I've added the repository you mentioned, and I'm in the progress of upgrading my packages. I'll report back if there are any changes in Oolite.

Mint 13 (I believe both MATE and Cinnamon edition) are using MDM, which is based off GDM v2.x, if I recall. I'm running the MATE edition on all three of my machines.
It probably won't hurt to add the repo and update as you did, I'm just a bit more cautious when doing things like that. There was a Mint developer who was very popular among the community that passed away recently and "fortune" on the Mint terminal has many quotes from him (his last name was Husse). Anyway, one of his quotes says, essentially "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Don't break it if you can't fix it." While I've noticed that adding the repo does in fact fix many problems with graphics-heavy applications, since it is cutting edge stuff, it will break your system once in a while (a very very rare occurrence indeed, but it does happen), particularly the libgl1-mesa driver - however, when things do go awry, they are fixed within a day or two .

So far, the new packages have fixed a few issues, I can use GNOME 3 and GDM together now, which I am doing at the moment.

I'm not very cautious with computers, I jump in over my head a lot. But at least I can fix most problems I get, and if it can't be fixed, I just reinstall the OS.

RyanHoots wrote:

I'm not very cautious with computers, I jump in over my head a lot. But at least I can fix most problems I get, and if it can't be fixed, I just reinstall the OS.

Yeah, I've been down that avenue a few times. Once a friend had me move my user to the audio group instead of just adding my user to the audio group - you can imagine what kind of trouble that caused, and since I was new to linux (2nd install, perhaps) I hadn't yet established a root password (at the time I didn't know the seriousness of not establishing one ), so I was completely up turd creek.

I exercise more caution now because I really don't like having to waste 3+ hours on a fresh install. Ever since the above mess happened, I've become more careful, and have not broken a system once. However, this doesn't keep me from jumping into things - I just like to do as much research about it as I can before firing up the terminal and slapping in a bunch of commands; particularly, if it's a serious command, I'll look up several examples as well as read the command's man page.

Anyway, I'm glad you got it working right - that repo has come in real handy a couple of times now .

CommRLock78 wrote:

RyanHoots wrote:

I'm not very cautious with computers, I jump in over my head a lot. But at least I can fix most problems I get, and if it can't be fixed, I just reinstall the OS.

Yeah, I've been down that avenue a few times. Once a friend had me move my user to the audio group instead of just adding my user to the audio group - you can imagine what kind of trouble that caused, and since I was new to linux (2nd install, perhaps) I hadn't yet established a root password (at the time I didn't know the seriousness of not establishing one ), so I was completely up turd creek.

I exercise more caution now because I really don't like having to waste 3+ hours on a fresh install. Ever since the above mess happened, I've become more careful, and have not broken a system once. However, this doesn't keep me from jumping into things - I just like to do as much research about it as I can before firing up the terminal and slapping in a bunch of commands; particularly, if it's a serious command, I'll look up several examples as well as read the command's man page.

Anyway, I'm glad you got it working right - that repo has come in real handy a couple of times now .

Yeah, thanks for your help, maybe I won't have to do any new OS installations for a while.

I have loads of free time, so reinstalling my OS is something I could do daily if I had to (although I would get tired of it after a few days). It's actually been a few months since a reinstall...