[BUG] Failed to create VkDevice with high priority queue

[feilen]

Describe the bug When launching SteamVR with a vanilla kernel, the following logs are printed:

Wed Apr 01 2020 18:10:55.277967 - Attempting to enable async support...
Wed Apr 01 2020 18:10:55.277977 - Enabling async support!
Wed Apr 01 2020 18:10:55.278262 - Failed to create VkDevice with high priority queue.
Wed Apr 01 2020 18:10:55.278285 - Disabling async support and retrying.

Installing (in my case, by downloading and dpkg -i-ing the debs) the linux-steamvr kernel resolves the issue.

There's a noticable difference with and without it, in that severely underperforming games (NMS with several settings turned up) will give a flickering double-vision unless 'Use legacy reprojection mode' is enabled, and games which previously would be pretty underperforming (VRChat in certain worlds) have much smoother rotation.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install default kernel (linux 5.4) and start steam web console.
2. Logs (above) are consistently printed, and severely underperforming games have significant judder (turning your head makes everything flicker as frames are updated)
3. Install linux-steamvr kernel
4. Errors above are no longer printed, somewhat-underperforming games are smoother and significantly-underperforming games have the double-vision mentioned unless explicitly set to legacy reprojection mode.

Expected behavior Since steamvr-launcher has setcap enabled, it should be able to set the priority properly regardless of kernel version or hacks, but it's not presently able to.

System Information (please complete the following information):

• Distribution: Ubuntu 20.04 (also reproduced on 19.10)
• SteamVR version: Beta 1.11.11 (also reproduced on stable)
• Steam client version: Built Apr 4 2020, at 00:37:27
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Graphics driver version: Mesa 20.0.4 (LLVM 9.0.1)
• Gist for SteamVR System Information: https://gist.github.com/feilen/5d38122aa5bfe5e5516222df8b7cf279

Screenshots N/A

Additional context Possibly related (and more information) in #107

Note: Commenters who are also experiencing this issue are encouraged to include the "System Information" section in their replies.

[nrndda]

Also had this but after sudo setcap CAP_SYS_NICE=eip ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/linux64/vrcompositor-launcher async reprojection works.

Graphics: Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Vega 10 XL/XT [Radeon RX Vega 56/64] driver: amdgpu v: kernel Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: amdgpu resolution: 2560x1080~60Hz OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX Vega (VEGA10 DRM 3.36.0 5.6.13+ LLVM 10.0.0) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.1.0-rc3

[John-Gee]

@nrndda that worked here as well, thank you!

I hope in the future we won't need to do that though.

[nrndda]

Steam client does this automatically by asking root access in zenity, but for me it didn't work. Probably some tool was missing. Also I prefer to know why and what will be done with root access and not give it blindly.

[John-Gee]

I don't remember seeing such window, strange. I agree with not giving blind root access of course, especially after #3671

[ChristophHaag]

fun fact, you're not giving super user access to an opaque binary, you can see in ~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrstartup.sh that after the zenity dialog pops up, it simply uses polkit's pkexec to run setcap CAP_SYS_NICE=eip $STEAMVR_TOOLSDIR/bin/linux64/vrcompositor-launcher as root.

    if ! ${STEAM_ZENITY} --no-wrap --question --text="SteamVR requires superuser access to finish setup. Proceed?"; then
        pErr 'Error: user declined superuser request.'
        return 1
    fi

    pkexec setcap CAP_SYS_NICE=eip $STEAMVR_TOOLSDIR/bin/linux64/vrcompositor-launcher

[nrndda]

Oh, that's why it didn't work for me. I don't have polkit installed in my systemd-nspawn container, but have zenity and saw those attempts to run something as root.

[John-Gee]

Oh I had polkit but not zenity (qarma instead), I installed zenity and it worked. Thanks!

[feilen]

I should mention I've tried this before, doing sudo setcap CAP_SYS_NICE=eip and checking that it worked has no impact, reprojection still doesn't work and the above error message is still produced (except on the hacked kernel)

(See: #107)

[feilen]

Issue still persists after upgrade to Ubuntu 20.10.

> uname -a
Linux MAWnster 5.8.0-25-generic #26-Ubuntu SMP Thu Oct 15 10:30:38 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.10
Release:        20.10
Codename:       groovy