[GRASSLIST:8640] Eureka! [was Re: Re: NVIZ not working properly in GRASS 6?]

[Tom Russo]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 02:09:43PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 01:50:29PM -0600, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <russo at bogodyn.org> flavor, containing:
> > On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 11:30:20AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <rbeyer at arc.nasa.gov> flavor, containing:
> > > Tom,
> > > 
> > > On Thursday 13 October 2005 04:06 pm, Tom Russo wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hmmm.  Sounds like there's something fishy in the Mesa that comes with
> [...]
> > > 
> > > My FreeBSD 5.4 system with X.org 6.8.2 has an ATI video card, so
> > > the NVIDIA drivers aren't really a solution for me.
> > 
> > Nor is it a solution for me on my laptop with its ATI video.  I had been 
> > hoping that my problem there was the old BSD OS and older XFree86 install.  
> > Your experience is dashing that hope, since you're running what I'd be 
> > upgrading to.  
> > 
> > You might try installing DRI and enabling it.  I am not entirely certain that 
> > I ever did it correctly on the laptop (only tried once, probably two years ago, 
> > and now can't try it on the laptop because the current DRI port requires xorg, 
> > which I won't have until I update the machine).  See /usr/ports/graphics/dri, 
> > and check out the FreeBSD specific stuff on http://dri.sourceforge.net/

> Might be something quick to try.  I'm really curious if it helps, as it'll
> light a fire under me to upgrade that laptop's system.

It is indeed quick to try, and solved my problem.  Maybe it'll solve yours.

Following the directions in http://people.freebsd.org/~anholt/dri/install.html
I discovered that in fact there were only two things I needed to do on BSD 4.11
with XFree86 4.3.0 to get DRM running right:

0)  cd /sys/modules/drm && make && make install
1)  Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and:
  make sure that your XF86Config has the following lines in the Modules section:
  Load "dri"
  Load "glx"

  If you want users besides root to be able to use the DRI, add the following 
  section to your XF86Config.

  Section "DRI"
      Mode 0666
  EndSection

Then restart the X server.  I found that glxinfo showed "direct Rendering: Yes"
after this, glxgears was much, much faster than before, and NVIZ worked.  This
was with the ATI graphics built into the laptop.

Since you're running BSD 5.4, step 0 is unnecessary for you --- the necessary
kernel modules are already in the /boot/kernel directory and are automatically
loaded by the X server when it starts up and loads the "dri" module.  Naturally,
you'll be editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf instead.  You don't need to install
any ports, not even /usr/ports/graphics/dri, which is just the client drivers.

Now, why it is that one must have direct rendering for a MesaGL application
like NVIZ to work is another question that should probably be answered, but 
this solves my issues with NVIZ on my laptop.  Scratch one puzzler that I had 
written off for months.  Thank you for bringing it up here, or I'd probably 
have just upgraded my OS and X (using up more of an already stretched laptop  
disk drive) and found it didn't help!

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY     SAR502  DM64ux         http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 
 "The only thing you can do easily is be wrong, and that's hardly
  worth the effort." -- Norton Juster