[Therion] Loch 5.3.7 fails to start in Debian wheezy

Sat Jul 2 04:02:27 CEST 2011

+++ Andrew Atkinson [2011-07-01 20:20 +0100]:
> What sort of graphics card have you got? (and which
> >drivers/kernel)
> 
> lshw gives
>            *-display
>                 description: VGA compatible controller
>                 product: G71 [GeForce 7300 GS]
>                 vendor: nVidia Corporation
>                 physical id: 0
>                 bus info: pci at 0000:01:00.0
>                 version: a1
>                 width: 64 bits
>                 clock: 33MHz
>                 capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller
> bus_master cap_list rom
>                 configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
>                 resources: irq:16 memory:e1000000-e1ffffff
> memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:e0000000-e0ffffff
> 
> lspci give
> 
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G71 [GeForce
> 7300 GS] (rev a1)
> 
> If I have this right the install put on
> X.Org X server -- Nouveau display driver (experimental)
> 1:0.0.16+git20110411+8378443-1+b1

> Thought the drive might be a problem so tired installing
> 
> nvidia-kernel-common 20110515+1
> 
> Now I am not positive this was the right thing, and I have no idea
> how to check to see which one is in use, 

Nouveau is the Free Software driver. It is better for your karma, but
is still quite new and does not always actually work better than the
proprietary nvidia driver.

You can find which one is actually being used by looking in your
/etc/X11/xorg.conf if you have one ('driver' section) or
/var/log/Xorg.0.log which will have a Loadmodule 'nouvea' or
Loadmodule 'nvidia' line.

> which might help to see if
> it is the right one, as the other one is still there! There are a
> plethora of nvidia things I could install, including nvidia-settings
> and nvidia-xconfig, butnot found much of use on the internet about
> what does what

Those are utilities for setting up the proprietary driver (not sure
why there are two).

> I notice that
> nvidia-kernel-common 20110515+2
> 
> is available, but I have not played with forcing yet, and the
> graphics driver seems a poor one to start with.

The nvidia proprietary X drivers are in 'nvidia-glx', and you will
need that kernel as well for them to work. 

> Can you save the info from the Aven 'about' window -
> >that can be helpful.
> 
> Linux 2.6.39-2-amd64 x86_64
> wxWidgets 2.8.10 (GTK+ >= 2.6)
> Display Depth: 24 bpp (colour)
> OpenGL 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2
> Mesa Project
> Software Rasterizer

As Ol says you are missing the hardware openGl support. That comes
built-in with the nvidia proprietary drivers. To get it going with
noveau you need stuff as described here:
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/MesaDrivers but to be honest I'm a
bit vague about the details there. Ah, yes you need noveau_dri.so
loaded which is in the package libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental
which is available in wheezy. Try installing that and see how things
are.

This is the state of the art about a year ago:
http://www.seanius.net/blog/2010/04/nouveau-gallium-and-compiz-on-debian/
which is informative in terms of what is involved, but it seems all
that is no longer necessary.

This is slightly less scary Feb this year
status:http://mapopa.blogspot.com/2011/02/gallium3-nouveau-on-debian-sid-now.html

As it happens my work machine has an nvidia card running noveau so
I'll check loch on there. Probably a different card vintage though.

> >This is going to be difficult to debug remotely if I can't reproduce.
> 
> Time for a remote control program that works across the web, been
> looking for one that works on linux, easy to do on Windows nowadays
> :(

Been around for ages it's called vino/vinagre. (if you have gnome
installed it'll probably already be there. The tricky bit is that both
ends are often behind NAT so the machines can't see each other. It
works well given an IP. 

> >There should be some wxgtk samples/demos you can run which would show
> >if it is a wx problem or a loch problem. (loch uses VTK, which uses WX).
> >
> 
> A bit more of a pointer could be useful, but I will see what I can find

Sorry I failed to find that info quickly, so left as excercise for the
reader.

> >Another thing to try is
> >strace loch<filename>  2>&1>  therion.strace.log
> 
> strace not found? : fixed that
> 
> You meant
> 
> strace -o therion.strace.log loch

right, yes.  good. 

> Available from
> 
> http://www.ubss.org.uk/__therion/

Hopefuly Stacho can make something of that lot...

> >There is also therion 5.3.8 in unstable. Add that repo and you should
> >be able to  do
> >aptitude install therion/unstable
> >
> >and try that one. It's very unlikely to be different in the graphics
> >area though.
> 
> # aptitude install therion/unstable
> Unable to find an archive "unstable" for the package "therion"
> Unable to find an archive "unstable" for the package "therion"

You would need to add 
deb http://ftp.uk/debian.org/debian unstable main
to your /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get update. You would probably
also want to set /etc/apt/apt.conf to have APT::Default-release "wheezy";

I suggest not doing that just yet - lets see how far we can get with
wheezy first. 

> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   abiword{u} abiword-common{u} abiword-plugin-grammar{u}
>   abiword-plugin-mathview{u} aptdaemon{u} aumix{u} aumix-common{u}
> .
> .
> .
>   xfce4-verve-plugin{u} xfce4-wavelan-plugin{u} xfce4-weather-plugin{u}
>   xfce4-xkb-plugin{u} xfprint4{u} xli{u}
> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 207 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 376 MB will be freed.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
> 
> I chose not too

good call :-)

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/