xscreensaver 6.08 "No GL Visuals" Huh?

wirelessmc · 10-20-2023, 07:48 PM

This was a recent system upgrade on slackware64-current which included the most recent 6.08 xscreensaver package. I know I should probably send this one to the maintainer (and I will) but since I couldn't find this error reported elsewhere I thought I would strobe a wider audience to see if anyone has observed the frequent crash with the reported error as follows:

Code:

No GL Visuals - xscreensaver-gl* packages are required

I tried rebuilding/upgrading the 6.08 package with "--with-glx" switch, thinking this would most certainly fix the behavior as I have an nVidia graphics card and CUDA/Toolkit is installed on the system (nvidia-smi out below).

This (to my surprise) did not fix it. It is still crashing randomly on certain modes. Please let me know if you have seen this? In the mean time I will reach out to Jamie over at jwz.org and aprise him of this.
Thanks!

Code:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 525.60.13    Driver Version: 525.60.13    CUDA Version: 12.0     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 33%   41C    P8     1W /  38W |    384MiB /  2048MiB |      1%      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

Petri Kaukasoina · 10-21-2023, 03:48 AM

Does anything besides xscreensaver work which uses opengl? What does glinfo or glxinfo say?

Some graphic demos of xscreensaver use opengl and some don't. For example, run:

Code:

/usr/libexec/xscreensaver/antmaze

antmaze is linked against GL. Maybe it doesn't work for you but

Code:

/usr/libexec/xscreensaver/anemone

which does not link to GL, works?

wirelessmc · 10-21-2023, 12:18 PM

Thanks Petri,

Both opengl and openglx are working fine on this system. I would report their entire output if they weren't so verbose - but below are some excerpts.

In the mean time here are some email exchanges I had with Jamie over at jwz.org who claims this might be an issue with $PATH not including "/usr/libexec/xscreensaver/". It's true that I don't find this anywhere in any of my Slackware System paths.

jwz: Run "xscreensaver-gl-visual". If that says command not found, fix that. If it says none, your X server configuration is screwed up.

me:That executable is in a non-standard location with my package. This is true even on my older xscreensaver packages (6.06 and less) which seem to be running just fine.
/usr/libexec/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-gl-visual
For now I have simply created a symlink in /usr/bin to that one binary (xscreensaver-gl-visual). I get the sense that it is a band-aid for something else that is broken on my system.

jwz: XScreenSaver puts /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/ on $PATH before launching anything. If you built it yourself, check the output of configure. Something got compiled or installed wrong.

I start the xscreensaver daemon in $HOME/.config/autostart/XScreenSaver.desktop

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Exec=/usr/bin/xscreensaver --no-splash
Icon=xscreensaver
Name=XScreenSaver
Path=
Terminal=False
Type=Application

Code:

glinfo:
GL_VERSION: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 525.60.13
GL_RENDERER: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2
GL_VENDOR: NVIDIA Corporation
GL_EXTENSIONS: GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect <excluding extensions in favor of non-verbosity>
...
GL_SHADING_LANGUAGE_VERSION = 4.60 NVIDIA
GLU_VERSION: 1.3
GLU_EXTENSIONS: GLU_EXT_nurbs_tessellator GLU_EXT_object_space_tess 
GLUT_API_VERSION: 4
GLUT_XLIB_IMPLEMENTATION: 13

Code:

glxinfo:
name of display: :0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions: <excluding the remaining output in favor of post terseness>

wirelessmc · 10-21-2023, 12:29 PM

follow up to above....

I have not seen a crash since I created a symlink to xscreensaver-gl-visual in /usr/bin
That said I think there is a reason for not including /usr/libexec/xscreensaver in the system path. This path must be linked from a background shell in the xscreensaver daemon which is definitely running - i.e.:
xscreensaver-systemd

wirelessmc · 10-22-2023, 05:47 PM

This is looking more like a version issue (6.08) than nVidia or other. The same crash

Code:

No GL visuals: the xscreensaver-gl* packages are required.

was just observed on my recently upgraded AMD-Ryzen with Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card. These systems never had exhibited this crash prior to 6.08. I have created the same symlink and restarted the xscreensaver-systemd daemon. Stay tuned...

Code:

/usr/bin_} ln -sfn /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-gl-visual

wirelessmc · 10-24-2023, 05:18 PM

This is most certainly new behavior with xscreensaver 6.08. For the time being until this (bug) is fixed I will revert to an earlier package. Creating a symlink to /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-gl-visual in /usr/bin/ and restarting the daemon doesn't resolve the issue. Crashes are still occurring. I will submit this as a formal bug on Jamie's jwz.org website.

Since these are all stock slackware packages I'm surprised no one else is reporting it. I would imagine there is a log of it somewhere. I will dig around in my log files.