The Linux gremlins broke my GL installation

[rbininger]

I've been a Linux user (RedHat) for about two years now ... and have encountered a problem for which I just can't seem to find a fix. I've played games on this machine for years, and have never had any real problems in getting apps up and running.

Last night, I decided to patch (2199) and play a little UT2003, and found that it froze at the intro screen every time. Assuming a driver problem, I upgraded both my RH8 kernel and the nVidia drivers (kernel 2.4.18-24.8.0 from RPM and nVidia driver 4191 from source). Still no luck on getting UT2003 launched.

In troubleshooting my UT problem, I tried a couple other acceled games and found none of them worked anymore either (QF, Q3A, RtCW, hell even GLTron) ... all the GL based games bring the system to a stand-still, while anything else (SDL games like LBreakout, SimCity 3000, etc...) work fine. What happens is:

1. Machine boots perfectly without error.
2. X loads perfectly without error (running WMaker .80.2 & OSS 3.97h). The nVidia splash screen displays properly on X launch.
3. GL games run slooow, like 1 frame a minute slow (the machine acts as though it's locked-up). I can verify the games don't die completely though, since I can CTRL+ALT+F2 back down to a console to run a kill command to free the X display. When I do this though (leave X via escape) the game resumes normal speed. Although of course I can't see the game any longer while at a console prompt, audibly anyhow, I can hear what _should_ be happening at normal framerates.
4. After killing the offending GL app, I can CTRL+ALT+F7 back into X, and everything resumes normal operation. Sound, keyboard and mouse control are fine.

Nothing else with my nVidia installation appears to be a problem though, since all other apps work fine. Audio and other I/O devices seem OK as well, for example: I can listen to music in XMMS, watch movies with audio in Xine and Mplayer, play games like PySol and Frozen Bubble, etc...

This leads me to assume that the problem is with the GL libraries ... which is where I'm stumped. Everything checks out fine ... I've RTFM, Re-RTFMed, Googled, and trolled every post here ... no luck. Going back a revision or two with kernels and drivers doesn't work, so I'm beginning to believe that _something else_ I've installed in the last two or three weeks broke libraries. The last games I can remember running without errors were FlightGear or FooBilliards, both of which were installed in late January. Don't really remember that I've tried playing games since then.

I've attached a log file containing the output of some different commands and files. I've also gone through the RedHat updater and brought all packages to current (Feb 16), as I had read in an nVidia FAQ about problems with PAM and the /dev/nvidia* devices.

Any help appreciated, thanks!

System:

Asus P4B MoBo
Intel Pentium 1.7Ghz
x2 512Mb PC-133 SDRAM
nVidia GF4-4200 Ti/64Mb
SoundBlaster Live! MP+
x2 3Com 3C905 NICs
& drives, printers, monitors, yada yada...

EDIT: Updated nvidia.txt attachment

[bwkaz]

Well, this one promises to be interesting... ;)

What does glxgears do?

[rbininger]

Well, glxgears doesn't really do anything. When I launch the app, the window opens, draws the first frame with the proper gears, and hangs. I get a new screen draw approx every 15-20 seconds, but the system response goes into the toilet.

As I wrote in my first post, with some difficulty, I can use CTRL+ALT+F2 and go down to a full screen console, or use a networked comp and rsh/telnet in. That's what's frustrated me; once I launch a GL app, mouse and keyboard input are slowed as well. For example, I can't move the mouse to close the window, but if I can get in a CTRL^C or get to a console window, with the GL window not showing, I can issue commands and use the system fine.

While glxgears is running, the X server only reads input in fits and spurts, as if input is only read in n millisecond periods every-so-often as when the screen is updated. However, if I have something like XMMS playing at the same time, a song will continue playing without interruption, though things like the progress meter and spectrum analyzer don't redraw during the period of glxgears being active.

Another test I've tried is to load glxgears and pipe it's framerate report to a different terminal. For example, having run "glxgears >> /dev/tty2" and then dropping out of X, I get a report of:

55 frames in 8.0 seconds = 6.875 FPS
11 frames in 8.0 seconds = 1.375 FPS
66096 frames in 5.0 seconds = 13219.200 FPS
66121 frames in 5.0 seconds = 13224.200 FPS

The jump from 11 to 66,000 occurs at the point where CTRL+ALT+F2 is issued and X is backgrounded.