Gnome 3.22.1 doesn't enable 3D acceleration

julesmazur · 2016-11-16 02:48:33

I'm running Gnome 3.22.1 (Xorg, not Wayland) under kernel 4.8.7-1 x86_64 on a mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro. In terms of graphics, this laptop has both:

- An embedded GPU, an Intel HD Graphics 4000; and
- A discrete GPU, an NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M.

After installing Arch for the first time about a week and a half ago, Gnome 3.22.1 seemed to work well, besides some slight UI lag which was solved by following the advice in this StackExchange answer and pasting this in my `/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf`:

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "intel"
#  Option      "AccelMethod"  "sna"
   Option      "TearFree"    "true"
EndSection

This was under kernel 4.8.6, one patch behind. After installing that kernel patch, a number of packages on my system stopped working, causing hangs on boot and numerous other issues, and at the time I'd decided that the best course of action was to reinstall my system (allowing me to downgrade the kernel) and restore my personal files from a backup. Unfortunately, I don't remember the configuration of drivers and firmware I'd had installed then.

Here's the thing: after the reinstall, Gnome seems not to recognize my onboard GPU, and I can't check whether or not it recognizes the discrete GPU. Instead, Gnome says that my GPU is a Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.9, 256 bits). This is the output of lspci | grep VGA, though:

$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 650M Mac Edition] (rev a1)

The result of this is a complete lack of 3D acceleration, which results in low framerates during normal usage (including while typing this up with no other significant load on my system), as well as graphically broken window resizing, leaving strange artefacts while dragging that only disappear on window refocus (I'd attach a screenshot if not for the fact that screenshots also wipe the artefacts; I'm linking to a photo instead).

http://i.imgur.com/JUTsk7t.jpg

I've tried installing different configurations of graphics libraries:

- mesa-libgl + xf86-video-intel + xf86-video-nouveau (no change in behaviour)
- mesa-libgl + xf86-video-intel + nvidia (no change in behaviour)
- nvidia-libgl + xf86-video-intel + xf86-video-nouveau (jittering gets much worse, GUI desktop is essentially unsuable)
- nvidia-libgl + xf86-video-intel + nvidia (same as above)

I realize now that nvidia-libgl just doesn't have support for intel embedded GPUs. Moving on, though; I finally tried to include the lines from the StackOverflow answer in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf, and this caused a hang at boot until I removed the file via a quick boot into an archiso flash drive.

Since then, I consistently can't get 3D acceleration to work, but I inconsistently get this kind of message in dmesg which might be related to this issue:

[    5.211916] gnome-shell[403]: segfault at 44 ip 00007f9992fcecf1 sp 00007ffc039ea620 error 4 in libmutter.so.0.0.0[7f9992ef9000+12b000]

I can't provide useful logs from the Xorg logs, because those get overwritten on restart; so I can't give any information (AFAIK) to diagnose the system hang on startup when I create the 20-intel.conf file.

What's the likely cause of this issue, and how can I solve it?

n.b. Since restoring my system, I performed a system-wide update including a kernel upgrade back to 4.8.7-1-x86_64 because AFAIK the software which was causing errors earlier had been patched.

Mod note: converted oversized image to url. Please see the CoC regarding acceptable image sizes. -- WorMzy

Last edited by WorMzy (2016-11-16 09:56:58)

Lone_Wolf · 2016-11-16 11:33:01

I can't provide useful logs from the Xorg logs, because those get overwritten on restart

Boot into multi-user.target instead of GDM/graphical.target , see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … boot_into]

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2016-11-16 11:33:24)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-11-16 02:48:33

Gnome 3.22.1 doesn't enable 3D acceleration

#2 2016-11-16 11:33:01

Re: Gnome 3.22.1 doesn't enable 3D acceleration

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