Problems with SL on Ubuntu Linux

[XavierTehFurry]

Hello everyone,

                   So, I decided to install Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS after my Windows partition crashed. I would play Second Life a lot on Windows and never had a problem with it. But when I try to play it on linux, I am greeted with a error message saying "The hardware you are using doesn't meet the requirements of Second Life". I never got this message in Windows 7. So, I logged in anyway, and after it goes through the "logging in" screen, Ubuntu crashes and logs me out of my user account. I have checked the Additional Drivers and nothing shows up for my graphics card. The laptop I am using is the Acer Aspire 5733z-4851.

                                                                                         Thanks,

                                                                                                     Xavier

[Jenni Darkwatch]

If you get logged out of your user account, the X server crashed. Sounds like a driver problem to me in this particular case, though I don't have anything with Intel graphics.

All I could guess is to change the SL startup to skip the hardware check, then set graphics to low and see if you can log in. If you can, start cranking things up and see where it crashes.

You didn't mention if you installed the 32bit or 64bit version of Ubuntu. If it's the 64bit version you may have other problems with SL going on too.

[Storm Clarence]

But of course you do.  What did you expect?  I will help you with your question if you help me with mine... ok?

Why did you select Ubuntu?

a) It sounds cool

b) most of the keys on your keyboard are worn except for the *Uu*

c) your new bff is a nerd and you want to impress him/her

d) you once configured dns on your router so you thought you could handle anything Linux throws at you

e) you don't read the manual because it is easier to ask some one else

f) you never heard of Mint

 

Linux will run on almost ANY hardware; SL will not.  Do you understand the difference?

[Feldspar Millgrove]

SL was running fine for me on Ubuntu, but I haven't tried it in about 6 weeks.  During that time I upgraded to the new LTS from April, and I think new SL versions may have been installed.  Now SL crashes the X server and I get immediately logged out if I try to run it.

 

Just sayin: Could be that SL will run fine on this guy's Ubuntu, if he gets all the right stars lined up.

 

I haven't bothered to try and fix mine yet; mostly use OS X on another computer or Windows (on the Linux machine) for SL.

 

 

[Sep Luik]

I fly planes on SL which means you need a fast system to handle the sim crossings, but my windows xp can't handle the Ram needed any longer.  Rather than pay for windows 7 I thought I'd try Ubuntu... is it worth it?  Will it work for me?

 

Sep

[Masami Kuramoto]

Second Life on Linux requires Nvidia or ATI graphics.

You were logged out of the desktop session due to a graphics driver crash.

[XavierTehFurry]

How do you skip hardware check? And yes, I am running 64bit Ubuntu.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Add --no-probe to the startup command line. There's a few ways to do it, here's a page about it: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_parameters#Command_line

With 64bit Linux you will need the 32bit compatibility libraries, and you'll likely still run into problems left and right. On Ubuntu, install the ia32-libs package. To be honest, on a desktop, 64bit Ubuntu is just a royal useless pain in the butt.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

---

Sep Luik wrote:

I fly planes on SL which means you need a fast system to handle the sim crossings, but my windows xp can't handle the Ram needed any longer.  Rather than pay for windows 7 I thought I'd try Ubuntu... is it worth it?  Will it work for me?

 

Sep

---

Just try it out. Install it on a spare partition or disk and see if it works for you. Without knowing your hardware, that's about the best advice you may get. I've not used Windows in a decade, so it does work for me at least. Right now I use Kubuntu 32bit 12.04

[Storm Clarence]

---

Sep Luik wrote:

I fly planes on SL which means you need a fast system to handle the sim crossings,

but my windows xp can't handle the Ram needed any longer

.  Rather than pay for windows 7 I thought I'd try Ubuntu... is it worth it?  Will it work for me?

 

---

It depends. Memory (RAM) management is critical to both worlds. And the more memory the more difficult to manage. The linux kernel space is where management of memory happens. In linux processes are implemented at the kernel as instances of task_struct the process descriptor. The mm field in task_struct points to the memory descriptor, mm_struct which is an executive summary of a program’s memory. It stores the start and end of memory segments , the number of physical memory pages used by the process (rss) - the amount of virtual address space used. Contained within memory descriptor we also find the two "beasts" for managing program memory: set of virtual memory areas and page tables. I cannot speak for MS XP, but I do know the tools packaged with almost any flavor: Ubuntu, Suse, Mandriva, Zorin, et al., allow you to both address memory allocation and/or write other tools.

A windows analog to the above VMA is Virtual Address Descriptor (VAD) stored in an AVL tree. The 'eprocess' block in windows is sorta like task_struct and mm_struct.

So, basically, there is very little difference between Windows and Linux addressing memory (RAM). In the end it will come down to how much you apply yourself in writing and tweaking the Linux environment to better handle your memory management.

Toward this end, I would give it a try by creating a Linux partition and test away. Create your own benchmarks and let us know.

[Masami Kuramoto]

---

Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

With 64bit Linux you will need the 32bit compatibility libraries, and you'll likely still run into problems left and right. On Ubuntu, install the ia32-libs package. To be honest, on a desktop, 64bit Ubuntu is just a royal useless pain in the butt.

---

That is a thing of the past.

Running SL on 64bit Ubuntu used to be a problem because the ia32-libs compatibility package did not include all the libraries that SL needed. GStreamer in particular was missing, and that left the SL viewer without the ability to play back parcel audio and video streams.

Today however, 64bit Ubuntu can install packages straight from the 32bit branch of the distribution. In the package manager these packages are marked with the suffix ":i386". In fact the ia32-libs compatibility package is no longer needed; it still exists for convenience, but instead of the actual libraries it only contains dependencies triggering the installation of the regular 32bit packages. For SL this means that all the previously missing 32bit GStreamer packages are now available for installation through the package manager.

More info here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MultiarchSpec

[Jenni Darkwatch]

I just recently tried that actually, with Ubuntu 12.04 64bit. SL itself worked - sort of. Streaming music in SL didn't work right (incredibly laggy and choppy). Media on a prim didn't work right. Voice didn't work at all. Since I had a few other applications that didn't run right - namely my MIDI controller software - I just ditched the 64bit partition after a wasted day. On servers I still use 64bit but there I have no need for gaming, desktops or sound. On desktops Ubuntu is useless unless Ubuntu folks can get their act together and install the 32bit libs along by default. I've got no time or desire to hunt down dependencies. Might work better with other distros, didn't have time or patience to try them all to find one that worked.

[Masami Kuramoto]

---

Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

I just recently tried that actually, with Ubuntu 12.04 64bit. SL itself worked - sort of. Streaming music in SL didn't work right (incredibly laggy and choppy). Media on a prim didn't work right. Voice didn't work at all.

 Since I had a few other applications that didn't run right - namely my MIDI controller software - I just ditched the 64bit partition after a wasted day.

---

I have two computers running Ubuntu 12.04 64bit, a desktop and a laptop, and all of the above things work fine on them (including my MIDI controller). Even PulseAudio stopped causing trouble with SL. So I would assume that it is not the 64bit architecture that is causing your issues.

---

On desktops Ubuntu is useless unless Ubuntu folks can get their act together and install the 32bit libs along by default. I've got no time or desire to hunt down dependencies. Might work better with other distros, didn't have time or patience to try them all to find one that worked.

---

You are barking up the wrong tree. How many 32bit applications do you have? I have exactly two: Skype, which is packaged and shipped by Canonical, so all its dependencies get satisfied automatically, and Second Life. The blame here is firmly assigned to Linden Lab, because they neither ship the viewer as a 64bit application nor package it up as a .deb archive. If they did at least one of those things, all those dependency troubles would be gone instantly. Now you are suggesting that Canonical should preload the entire set of 32bit libraries, just in case. Quite frankly, that is nonsense.

[XavierTehFurry]

So, how would I get in touch with Linden Labs? And will they do anything?

[XavierTehFurry]

Really? Are you blatantly calling me stupid? I run a combo of Windows 7, Pinguy OS, and Arch Linux around my house. Pinguy OS is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which is why I said Ubuntu 12.04. Get out of this thread you troll.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

The MIDI problems stem from an 16-port MIDI PCIe adapter card. The drivers come in source (Thank Goddess!) and compile and load fine under 64bit, but there's a known issue where the driver craps out when receiving certain MIDI commands from a Roland synth. Skype I didn't use or try. Similar problems for some old(er) binary-only games. Just look at the JIRA, or Google for 64bit problems. There's a lot of them. Blaming the users for those is a typical Linux **bleep** dev reaction.

I'm pretty sure most of my problems are/were missing libraries. As I said, I don't have the time or interest to spend much time hunting down libraries. It occurred to me to just recompile the viewer in 64bit - presuming that's possible - but again that takes too much time. It's a desktop. It should work out of the box. On 32bit it does. On 64bit it doesn't. I'll check 64bit Desktops again in a few years or decades.

Sure, it's easy to blame LL for the lack of a package. However: They should then also provide packages for other distros. And that's simply something I would flat out not expend time on if I were in LLs shoes. Linux is a fringe OS on Desktops, there's very little ROI.

[Storm Clarence]

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XavierTehFurry wrote:

Really? Are you blatantly calling me stupid? I run a combo of Windows 7, Pinguy OS, and Arch Linux around my house. Pinguy OS is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS which is why I said Ubuntu 12.04. Get out of this thread you troll.

---

Did you get an answer to your issue in this thread?

 

[Masami Kuramoto]

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Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

Just look at the JIRA, or Google for 64bit problems. There's a lot of them. Blaming the users for those is a typical Linux **bleep** dev reaction.

---

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just saying that it works here.

Yes, Google is full of those reports, because many people blame the 64bit architecture first. Just like you did. But since there are 64bit installs working flawlessly, the problem must be somewhere else.

---

I'm pretty sure most of my problems are/were missing libraries. As I said, I don't have the time or interest to spend much time hunting down libraries. It occurred to me to just recompile the viewer in 64bit - presuming that's possible - but again that takes too much time. It's a desktop. It should work out of the box. On 32bit it does. On 64bit it doesn't. I'll check 64bit Desktops again in a few years or decades.

---

As usual, there's an easy way and a right way. The right way is to demand 64bit binaries from LL, because that would also break the 3GB virtual memory barrier. The easy way is to go backwards in time, run Ubuntu 32bit and impose that barrier on all applications, just because of Second Life.

---

Sure, it's easy to blame LL for the lack of a package. However: They should then also provide packages for other distros.

---

You are contradicting yourself. On the one hand you say supporting the fringe is a waste of time, but then you suggest that LL should make packages for Bob's home-grown distro, the fringe of the fringe. No, they should not. They should make one package for the most frequently used and most user-friendly distribution, and leave the repackaging to Bob. A .deb package can still be unpacked and run on the spot just like a .tar.bz2, so nothing would be lost. What would be gained is automatic dependency resolution on all Debian-based systems, including Ubuntu and Mint. That is an audience somewhere north of 20 million.

I receive automatic Blender builds in .deb format from a Launchpad repository every day. Why can't LL set up something similar?

[Jenni Darkwatch]

I think I forgot to add a word in there. What I meant was: "If LL provides .deb packages, they also should provide other packages for other distros - complete with dependencies."

It would be nice to see 64bit binaries for Windows and Linux but I don't see LL having any plans for it.

On the other hand, Linux Desktop users overall are a forgettable percentage and hardly worth the effort of supporting it. I'm of course not entirely sure if that's true for SL or not, but for example at my day job I generally don't waste time&money on supporting fringe. You could call it hypocrytic because I do run a Linux-only shop, but for servers it's not fringe and makes a lot more sense than, say, Windows. On servers I also happily run 64bit. Just not on Desktop. Once in a few years I try, and usually ditch it when it again and again fails to meet _my_ needs.

[XavierTehFurry]

Not at all.

[Masami Kuramoto]

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Jenni Darkwatch wrote:

I think I forgot to add a word in there. What I meant was: "If LL provides .deb packages, they also should provide other packages for other distros - complete with dependencies."

---

That's how I understood it. And no, they shouldn't. They should not do more, they should do different. A .deb package would be the same amount of work to set up, it would still work like a .tar.bz2 on distributions that don't support .deb, but it would make a huge difference on those that do.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm not expecting this to happen any time soon. What I do expect is that Cloud Party will be eating Linden Lab's lunch in the not too distant future. They manage to be multi-platform without any dependencies at all.

[Jenni Darkwatch]

Since Cloud Party is FB only, I can't and won't comment on that.

I guess it'd be nice to provide a metapackage .deb (and .ymp and so on and so forth) for the dependencies at least. One for 32bit, one for 64bit. That ought to be a one-shot job and no fuss.

LL providing 64bit binaries, let alone .deb packages (and .ymp and whatever else) is something I don't see happen in the near future, or even at all. If there's a disproportionate number of SL users on Linux, who knows. But they haven't even provides a Win64 build...

[Arnas Soderstrom]

So, having said all that --- is it definitely the dependencies, or is it definitely something else?