Arch Linux

num18

Member

Registered: 2019-02-05

Posts: 13

Cinnamon rendering problems in virtualbox

Dear all,

continuing my adventures in Arch, I am trying to get Cinnamon to run properly in arch.

The steps I took before installing cinnamon:
1) I followed the instructions at the virtualbox guest page, installed the CD version of virtualbox-guest-utils and enabled all the guest utils kernel modules:

systemctl status vboxservice
● vboxservice.service - VirtualBox Guest Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/vboxservice.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2019-02-17 15:26:42 CET; 50min ago
  Process: 468 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/modprobe vboxguest (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 471 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/modprobe vboxvideo (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
  Process: 475 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/modprobe vboxsf (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 476 (VBoxService)
    Tasks: 8 (limit: 4713)
   Memory: 2.6M
   CGroup: /system.slice/vboxservice.service
           └─476 /usr/bin/VBoxService -f

2) I checked to see if direct rendering works properly (I have enabled 3d acceleration in the virtual machine):

glxinfo | grep direct
direct rendering: Yes
    GL_AMD_gpu_shader_int64, GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect, 
    GL_ARB_direct_state_access, GL_ARB_draw_buffers, 
    GL_ARB_draw_indirect, GL_ARB_draw_instanced, GL_ARB_enhanced_layouts, 
    GL_ARB_map_buffer_range, GL_ARB_multi_bind, GL_ARB_multi_draw_indirect, 
    GL_AMD_multi_draw_indirect, GL_AMD_seamless_cubemap_per_texture, 
    GL_ARB_depth_texture, GL_ARB_direct_state_access, GL_ARB_draw_buffers, 
    GL_ARB_draw_indirect, GL_ARB_draw_instanced, GL_ARB_enhanced_layouts, 
    GL_ARB_map_buffer_range, GL_ARB_multi_bind, GL_ARB_multi_draw_indirect,

glxinfo | grep renderer
    GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_query_renderer, 
    GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_query_renderer, 
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0, 256 bits)

glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0, 256 bits)
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 18.3.3
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.1 Mesa 18.3.3
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.40
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 18.3.3
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

3) Finally, as a control, I installed linux mint 19.1 in a separate virtual machine with the same exact specs as this one.  After I installed linux mint 19.1 at no point did cinnamon complain about software rendering.

4) Next, I created a new user so that cinnamon does not mess with my user settings, and installed cinnamon.

5) I then grabbed my user's xinitrc and simply replaced exec i3 with exec cinnamon-session ( perhaps this is where the problems lie: I may need some configuration options that I do not understand):

.xinitrc:

#!/bin/sh
userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
sysresources=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/etc/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f $sysresources ]; then

    xrdb -merge $sysresources

fi

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
    xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then

    xrdb -merge "$userresources"

fi

if [ -f "$usermodmap" ]; then
    xmodmap "$usermodmap"
fi

# start some nice programs

if [ -d /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d ] ; then
 for f in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/?*.sh ; do
  [ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
 done
 unset f
fi
xrandr --output VGA-1 --mode 1920x1080

exec cinnamon-session 

After setting this, I am executing startx as the new user, and unfortunately cinnamon runs in software rendering mode.  I do not know what else to do to make cinnamon run properly, so if you have any suggestions or need more information, please let me know!

Note: I could not find any cinnamon logs; I do not have an .xsession-errors file and the .cinnamon folder does not have any logfiles that could illuminate the situation.  If you know where cinnamon keeps logs, I would like to know.

Last edited by num18 (2019-02-18 11:06:46)

num18

Member

Registered: 2019-02-05

Posts: 13

Re: Cinnamon rendering problems in virtualbox

Update with more info:

Running my session in rendering mode, the screen aspect ratio/resolution was not correct.  When I corrected it to my native 1920x1080 the change was made successfully, but this change did not survive logout.  This makes me think that cinnamon wants to read from/write to some system folder that it cannot, since I am not running it as root.  I do not know if this is related to the software rendering problems in any way, however.

Last edited by num18 (2019-02-17 16:07:25)