Primus and VirtualBox update

[ghost]

Hi there. I just read https://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/Bumblebee/issues/278 and was testing some things based on that discussion. I noticed via dmesg that bbswitch was powering up then quickly powering back down the Nvidia card back down when I was trying ' primusrun vboxmanage startvm "Windows XP" ' and virtualbox --startvm "Windows XP". That post mentions root is needed to make it work so I tried some tricks with symbolic links that for whatever reason didn't work. So I imported the vbox disk... sudo virtualbox. I added root to the bumblebee, video, audio group, etc. - probably some things not needed but for experiment's sake to cover all bases. This is what I found:

[ 41.597638] bbswitch: enabling discrete graphics [ 42.095936] pci 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0 [ 42.234697] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=none,decodes=none:owns=none [ 42.234903] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 310.19 Thu Nov 8 00:52:03 PST 2012 [ 44.123729] NVRM: GPU at 0000:01:00: GPU-025de124-7fa3-daeb-b978-a80a7ff395c5 [ 50.043047] EMT-0[943]: segfault at 7fcff4424718 ip 00007fcff7d8a3e3 sp 00007fcfdcf70be0 error 4 in ld-2.16.so[7fcff7d81000+f000] [ 94.369910] bbswitch: disabling discrete graphics [ 94.382319] pci 0000:01:00.0: Refused to change power state, currently in D0 [ 94.382716] pci 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D3cold

Optirun works, however. (It's funny, I posted a while back that I couldn't get optirun to work with Windozey things).

I'm not sure how to diagnose the segfault so I just thought I'd offer the findings here.

[ghost]

And by 'symlink tricks' I only mean I created a "/root/VirtualBox VMs/Windows XP" symlink to the one in my home directory, since sudo primusrun virtualbox --startvm "/home/tod/VirtualBox VMs/Windows XP/Windows XP.vdi" didn't work.

[amonakov]

What is your Linux distribution and VirtualBox version? What if you run it like this:

CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH=/usr/\$LIB/primus primusrun virtualbox --startvm "/home/tod/VirtualBox VMs/Windows XP/Windows XP.vdi"

(without root, or sudo)

[ghost]

I'm using Arch 64 bit and VirtualBox 4.2.4-2 (the latest in the community repository).

CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH=/usr/\$LIB/primus primusrun virtualbox --startvm "/home/tod/VirtualBox VMs/Windows XP/Windows XP.vdi"

I had to adjust that to

CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH=/usr/\$LIB/primus primusrun virtualbox --startvm "Windows XP"

VirtualBox errors like before, saying the host's 3d acceleration isn't configured properly... but there's more info in dmesg:

  [   83.428433] warning: `VirtualBox' uses 32-bit capabilities (legacy support in use)
  [  105.441459] hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj.
  [  199.547762] VBoxTestOGL[904]: segfault at 3d4 ip 00007f90a0ca0061 sp 00007fff54c8d7e0 error 4 in ld-2.16.so[7f90a0c8c000+21000]
  [  199.729925] VBoxTestOGL[910]: segfault at 3d4 ip 00007f7bf6e4b061 sp 00007fffb649d860 error 4 in ld-2.16.so[7f7bf6e37000+21000]
  [  226.614857] VBoxTestOGL[945]: segfault at 3d4 ip 00007f3705249061 sp 00007fffdbb5fb10 error 4 in ld-2.16.so[7f3705235000+21000]
  [  226.708094] VBoxTestOGL[951]: segfault at 3d4 ip 00007fd0ff21b061 sp 00007fffb1322550 error 4 in ld-2.16.so[7fd0ff207000+21000]
  [  227.142054] VBoxTestOGL[969]: segfault at 3d4 ip 00007f9a99cf3061 sp 00007fff54dba1d0 error 4 in ld-2.16.so[7f9a99cdf000+21000]

[ghost]

Ah, my bad. I got it working with

 sudo chmod u+s /usr/lib/primus/libGL.so.1 
 CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH=/usr/lib/primus/ primusrun virtualbox --startvm "Windows XP"

EDIT: forgot the trailing / in the GL_PATH, it doesn't work without

 [tod@Shirokuro ~]$ dmesg | tail -8
 [ 5927.537708] pci 0000:01:00.0: Refused to change power state, currently in D0
 [ 5927.538218] pci 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D3cold
 [ 5928.038993] bbswitch: enabling discrete graphics
 [ 5928.537688] pci 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
 [ 5928.570422] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=none,decodes=none:owns=none
 [ 5928.570711] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  310.19  Thu Nov  8 00:52:03 PST 2012
 [ 5929.440163] NVRM: GPU at 0000:01:00: GPU-025de124-7fa3-daeb-b978-a80a7ff395c5

My Windows XP VM is 32-bit so i thought it'd be /usr/lib32/ setuid to do the trick, but no. It's still a work in progress... some of the dxdiag tests were failing so I tried installing DirectX on top of the guest additions... after I ran the dxdiag tests again:

    primus: warning: dropping a frame to avoid deadlock
    primus: warning: killed a worker to proceed
    VirtualBox: libglfork.cpp:401: static void* TSPrimusInfo::R::work(void*): Assertion `!r.pbuffer' failed.
    Aborted

And then the VM crashed silently.

Over the last few days I've messed with Bumblebee quite a bit. I switched to 32-bit and tried a PAE kernel (I'm back on Arch's stock 64-bit now). A tip in case anybody needs it - I had to set vmalloc=256Mi (I eventually set it to 768Mi) kernel parameter to get Bumblebee to work. I also solved a problem I was having with spectrwm: basicallly, optirun would 'fail without child processes' on most things I tried to run. It turns out it's because spectrwm uses libswmhack.so~, which is used to make sure an application that is spawned on one virtual desktop stays there and doesn't wander to the desktop you've switched to while it loads. Anyway, I just did

   LD_PRELOAD="" optirun whatever

to allow the process to proceed.

[ArchangeGabriel]

Is there still an issue here?

[ghost]

I just tested on a new installf of XP and primusrun starts Virtualbox fine with CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH="/usr/lib/primus/" primusrun vboxmanage startvm "Windows XP" and dmesg shows Nvidia's loaded. Unfortunately the fullscreen DirectX 9 test doesn't start or finish properly, leaving the resolution smaller and only the taskbar responding to clicks and such... at which point I just tell Virtualbox to power it down since I can't get my display back. It works with my Intel card.

And I still have to prepend LD_PRELOAD="" to optirun in spectrwm with 64 bit applications.

At least the segfaults are gone. Not sure if I should close this.

[ghost]

I'm the ghost that originally opened this issue (sorry about that). I suspect that I could have gotten this working all along, but I didn't know to specify intel_iommu=on on the kernel cmd line. This is what it looks like on the same machine nowadays, and works without issue:

 [ 4454.487735] bbswitch: enabling discrete graphics
 [ 4454.987955] pci 0000:01:00.0: power state changed by ACPI to D0
 [ 4455.050598] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:01:00.0,olddecodes=none,decodes=none:owns=none
 [ 4455.051510] [drm] Initialized nvidia-drm 0.0.0 20130102 for 0000:01:00.0 on minor 1
 [ 4455.051536] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module  325.15  Wed Jul 31 18:50:56 PDT 2013
 [ 4455.150570] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X
 [ 4458.604413] created IOMMU domain ffff88011ccf0100

So I'd like to request closure of this as user error. Note, I still had to specify CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH=/usr/lib/primus/ to get past the VBoxTestOGL.

And it works even though I have this BIOS quirk:

 [    1.609937] DMAR: BIOS has allocated no shadow GTT; disabling IOMMU for graphics

[amonakov]

Thanks for the note.