HowTo: Compiz Fusion in Hardy on cards with "ati"/"radeon" open source drivers

Just an FYI, this thread was unstickied and linked from this sticky on the General Help forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=773851

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAOF

System->Administration->Hardware Drivers gives you a list of all the hardware in your system for which a restricted driver exists, whether you're using it, and a button to press to enable it. I'd suggest using free drivers whenever possible - they're generally less awkward, and we're able to support them. If you have problems with 3D you can try enabling the restricted driver and this may help (or may not).

You can't install drivers in Wine. Wine doesn't talk directly to the hardware at all, and doesn't actually implement the Windows kernel (mostly), so there are none of the hooks that drivers would need. Also, that wouldn't be useful for your linux system since they'd only run in wine ;).

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ohh.. that's nice to know

I just wanted to say that this method worked for me, too. I admit, I only did it a couple minutes ago, but so far everything is good. :) If I remember, I'll post if anything is broken. :popcorn:

Hmm... this hasn't worked for me.

Here's the output of 'compiz --replace':

Code:

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mcleanj@mcleanj:~$ mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz/ && echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes >> ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager
mcleanj@mcleanj:~$ compiz --replace
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Found laptop using ati driver.
SKIP_CHECKS is yes, so continuing despite problems.
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (1680x1050) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No GLXFBConfig for default depth, this isn't going to work.
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0

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Any ideas would be helpful. compiz isn't neccessary for me, but it is nice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by john91

Hmm... this hasn't worked for me.

Here's the output of 'compiz --replace':

Code:

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mcleanj@mcleanj:~$ mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz/ && echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes >> ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager
mcleanj@mcleanj:~$ compiz --replace
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Found laptop using ati driver.
SKIP_CHECKS is yes, so continuing despite problems.
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (1680x1050) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No GLXFBConfig for default depth, this isn't going to work.
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Failed to manage screen: 0
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0

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Any ideas would be helpful. compiz isn't neccessary for me, but it is nice.

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Did you upgrade to Hardy or did you do a fresh install?
First try reconfiguring X

Code:

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg -phigh

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Now restart X with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE

If it still doesn't work, you may want to try reinstalling compiz

Code:

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sudo apt-get remove --purge compiz
sudo apt-get install compiz

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Thanks for your reply, really appreciate it!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAOF

That's very weird. If it didn't work using sudo I'd suggest reinstalling the 3D stack with

Code:

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sudo aptitude reinstall ~nmesa

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which would reinstall any package with 'mesa' in the name. It might still be worth a try, but I'm not confident.

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I just did that but it did not help.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAOF

Do you have any strange environment variables lying around?

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Not as far as I can see, except for $LIBGL_DRIVERS which is "/usr/lib/dri"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAOF

Have you previously tried building mesa from source and possibly have some remnants lying around?

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No, I've never tried building mesa by myself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAOF

Does either of 'echo $LD_PRELOAD' or 'echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH' give any output?

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Yes, $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is "/usr/lib/xorg", $LD_PRELOAD is empty.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RAOF

Oh, finally? "It didn't work as my user so I tried running it as root" isn't a particularly good debugging style :). In some cases doing this will break running the software as not-root in the future.

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Yes, of course you're right, I know that and normally don't do this but I read in another thread that a guy tried it "successfully" and I just wanted to check. Also, this means basically my environment is able to run 3D applications, just as normal user I'm not. Of course I already tried moving ~/.compizconfig and ~/.emerald out of the way but that wasn't it.

reconfiguring and restarting the X server didn't work, and neither did reinstalling compiz.

EDIT: nevermind, I've got it working great now!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by toobitz

Yes, $LD_LIBRARY_PATH is "/usr/lib/xorg", $LD_PRELOAD is empty.

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A follow-up to my own post, I had an idea just after writing it: since compiz was working when started as root and not if started as ordinary user, it must have something do to with my environment (variables). And voilà, I unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH and now compiz starts like a charm.

Now there's my next problem: where is this LD_LIBRARY_PATH being set? I just tried and added another user to the system - and this users has LD_LIBRARY_PATH set to /usr/lib/xorg just like me, so this must be something system-wide.. /etc/bash.bashrc does not contain it and putting "unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH" into ~/.bashrc doesn't do the trick either.. do you have any idea where this variable is being set?

Thanks a lot for your help already RAOF, you put me into the right direction!

I followed the steps in the first post to add in the skip checks, and I still wasn't getting compiz running. I eventually figured out that my xorg.conf wasn't configured at all.

this is my video card: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 01)

My xorg.conf was this http://ubuntuusers.de/paste/209267/

I figured out I needed to change "vesa" to "ati". After doing that and reloading x, (and having already put the skip text in), compiz was working.

Since it looks like my xorg.conf wasn't configured beyond default initially, i was trying to get it set up correctly. I haven't had the best luck searching around and I was hoping you guys could point me somewhere to figure out what settings I need to have in there for best performance, or if there is some util to help me do that. I'm also going to eventually be trying to get my second monitor working hopefully, so any tips in that area are appreciated.

thanks for the help

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bronsoja

I followed the steps in the first post to add in the skip checks, and I still wasn't getting compiz running. I eventually figured out that my xorg.conf wasn't configured at all.

this is my video card: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 01)

My xorg.conf was this http://ubuntuusers.de/paste/209267/

I figured out I needed to change "vesa" to "ati". After doing that and reloading x, (and having already put the skip text in), compiz was working.

Since it looks like my xorg.conf wasn't configured beyond default initially, i was trying to get it set up correctly. I haven't had the best luck searching around and I was hoping you guys could point me somewhere to figure out what settings I need to have in there for best performance, or if there is some util to help me do that. I'm also going to eventually be trying to get my second monitor working hopefully, so any tips in that area are appreciated.

thanks for the help

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The new version of X seems to rely more on autodetection than xorg.conf, and to be honest, it has made it a pain in the butt to configure X for cards that aren't autodetected. However, you should be able to use the default xorg.conf (works for me on the same card). If you run

Code:

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg -phigh

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then restart X with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE, xorg.conf will reset itself to the autodetected defaults for your system. At this point, you should be able to use compiz since you added the SKIP_CHECKS.