Nvidia, Unity, glxinfo couldn't find RGB GLX visual

**Mozai** · April 5th, 2011

Distro: Ubuntu 11.04-beta1 'natty'
Problem: 'your hardware does not support Unity; you will be using Ubuntu Classic.'

Installed: nvidia-common 0.2.28,
nvidia-current 270.30-0ubuntu3,
nvidia-settings 270.29-0ubuntu1,
linux-image-generic-pae 2.6.38.7.21,
linux-headers-generic-pae 2.6.38.8.22

Symptoms:
moses@deunan:~$ glxinfo
name of display: :0.0
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

moses@deunan:~$ lsmod |grep nvidia
nvidia 9736626 34

moses@deunan:~$ egrep '$(EE|WW|NI)$' /var/log/Xorg.0.log
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[ 1882.609] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist.
[ 1882.609] (WW) Hotplugging is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or 'vmmouse' will be disabled.
[ 1882.609] (WW) Disabling Keyboard0
[ 1882.609] (WW) Disabling Mouse0
... (that is to say, no errors)

moses@deunan:~$ egrep -i 'glx|nvidia' /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[ 1882.611] (II) "glx" will be loaded. This was enabled by default and also specified in the config file.
[ 1882.611] (II) LoadModule: "glx"
[ 1882.611] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/libglx.so
[ 1882.636] (II) Module glx: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[ 1882.637] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module 270.30 Fri Feb 25 14:51:42 PST 2011
[ 1882.637] (II) Loading extension GLX
[ 1882.638] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 1882.638] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[ 1882.639] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[ 1882.639] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver 270.30 Fri Feb 25 14:36:05 PST 2011
[ 1882.639] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[ 1882.654] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so
[ 1884.656] (II) Loading extension NV-GLX
[ 1884.702] (II) Initializing extension GLX
... (again, no errors. Xorg says the glx module is loaded just fine.)

moses@deunan:~$ dmesg |grep unity
[ 1894.457837] unity_support_t[5990]: segfault at 48 ip b761f473 sp bfd8ec60 error 4 in libGL.so.1.2[b75ed000+58000]

moses@deunan:~$ locate libGL.so.1.2
/usr/lib/mesa/libGL.so.1.2
(... so unity_support_t is linking in the mesa library, not /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so.1 as I would expect)

After reading a few other threads on the matter, I suspect the problem is with the 'nvidia-current' package more than the libgl1-mesa-glx or unity packages. ... though it does seem odd that Unity doesn't have a non-OpenGL verison.

If I find a solution, I'll come back. I hope the answer isn't "ditch nvidia-current for the binary install script from nVidia direct."
If someone found this thread in a search, the nVidia driver install scripts can be found at http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_display_archive.html

**Mozai** · April 5th, 2011

Came back from the nVidia website. Here's what I found:

Over there, version '260.19.44' is most recent, but I remember that Ubuntu's packages mention version '270.xx.xx' so I also grabbed 'Version: 270.18'. Results were the same for both.

Switched to one of the consoles, logged in and 'sudo -i' to root.
'service gdm stop'
'rmmod nvidia'
'dpkg --purge nvidia-current'
'sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.44.run'
... it will warn that the distro pre-install script failed. That's just a speed-bump that Ubuntu put in to make sure you don't install unsupported drivers by accident.

'startx' ... failed.
[ 4290.628] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 4290.629] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nvidia_drv.so
[ 4290.629] (II) Module nvidia: vendor="NVIDIA Corporation"
[ 4290.629] compiled for 4.0.2, module version = 1.0.0
[ 4290.629] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 4290.629] ================ WARNING WARNING WARNING WARNING ================
[ 4290.629] This server has a video driver ABI version of 10.0 that is not
supported by this NVIDIA driver. Please check
http://www.nvidia.com/ for driver updates or downgrade to an X
server with a supported driver ABI.
[ 4290.630] ================================================== ===============
[ 4290.630] (EE) NVIDIA: Use the -ignoreABI option to override this check.
[ 4290.630] (II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
[ 4290.630] (II) Unloading nvidia
[ 4290.630] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module requirement mismatch, 0)
[ 4290.630] (EE) No drivers available.

'sh ./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.44.run --uninstall' to clean it out.
Tried the same with 'NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.44.run' and got the same 'ABI version 10' error.

So looks like I'm stuck with package nvidia-current 270.30-0ubuntu3 , which Xorg happily thinks has OpenGL / GLX support, until it actually tries to use it. Bleah.

I'll keep trying with Ubuntu 11.04 'natty', and report back to this thread if I find anything.

**Mozai** · April 5th, 2011

Found it.

Since glxinfo was one of the programs having trouble, I tried 'ldd /usr/bin/glxinfo' to see what libraries it was loading.

moses@deunan:~$ ldd /usr/bin/glxinfo
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb7776000)
libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0xb768e000)

Checking on that, I tried 'dpkg -S /usr/lib/libGL.so.1' and discovered it was part of package 'libgl1-mesa-dev'. So I removed it.

Still didn't work -- ldconfig remade the file. (?!) ldconfig made it as a softlink to libGL.so.1.2, so I asked 'dpkg -S /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2' and I got "no path found matching pattern', so that means this library didn't come from an Ubuntu package.

(???) I couldn't just remove it either, because then /usr/bin/vi would stop working because it couldn't find libGL.so.1 (!!!)

On a hunch, and after seeing the contents of /etc/ld.so.conf.d/GL.conf = '/usr/lib/nvidia-current/', I deleted /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 and /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2, and re-ran 'ldconfig' to remake the LD path.

/bin/rm /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2
ldconfig
ldd /usr/bin/glxinfo
...linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb78a7000)
...libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/nvidia-current/libGL.so.1 (0xb77bf000)
...libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6 (0xb76a4000)

So things seem better now, and I was able to restart the X server with 'sudo service gdm restart' and log in using Unity again.

**lithopsian** · April 5th, 2011

Very common problem. libGL.so.1.2 occurs in at least two Ubuntu packages, neither of which are the GLX driver you want with nVidia proprietary drivers. ldconfig attempts to create symlinks to the "most recent" version of each driver but doesn't always get it right, especially with this type of driver where objects are kept in different directories. It is always best to try and uninstall whatever you had before you install nVidia drivers, but keep an eye on those symlinks anyways.

**Mozai** · April 17th, 2011

Originally Posted by lithopsian

Very common problem. ..with nVidia proprietary drivers.

Ah, thanks, I figured that would be the case.

I woudln't have installed the non-Ubuntu drivers, except when I upgraded to 11.04 natty, all of the Nvidia drivers were gone, and thus I had no X-windows. The documentation on installing video drivers always says to use the GUI tool... which is impossible to use when I have no X-windows (catch-22). I was forced to use /usr/bin/lynx to get the drivers from the Nvidia website and install those into the kernel and initrd. Un-installing the nvidia drivers from nvidia seems to be an awful mess, since I've re-un-installed them three times, installed the drivers from ubuntu twice, and apport still complains to me that I'm using nVidia drivers that didn't come from Ubuntu.