FS#4544 - BZFlag crashes spontaneously

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Sunday, 30 April 2006, 23:35 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture not specified
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version 0.7.1 Noodle
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Disturbingly often, BZFlag will crash right while I'm playing, with no notice and no fanfare. It usually happens when my tank gets blown up, but not always; it happens regardless of how much shared RAM I allocate for my video hardware, or what my AGP aperture is; and it gives me this message:

fire_buffer: DRM_VIA_CMDBUFFER returned -22
Aborted

I guess this might be a case of error-intolerant code somewhere, but I'm not really sure.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jan de Groot (JGC)
Monday, 12 June 2006, 06:53 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Additional comments about closing:  Just make sure you have enough videomemory.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Thursday, 04 May 2006, 13:25 GMT
Try the new unichrome driver from testing, it contains a new version of the mesa DRI drivers.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Thursday, 04 May 2006, 18:51 GMT
Thanks, but that gives me whacko washed-out colors - it apparently locks my monitor's brightness and contrast on maximum.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Friday, 05 May 2006, 07:15 GMT
Hmm, please supply information about the laptop, videochip, etc you have, the unichrome driver programmer is over here at the X.Org booth, I think I can ask him to take a look at it.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Friday, 05 May 2006, 11:04 GMT
It's a desktop, not a laptop... VIA KM400 graphics adapter, Biostar M7VIG-400 Pro motherboard*, Dell-branded Sony Trinitron monitor.

*Difference from "ordinary" M7VIG-400 is apparently in the BIOS, not anything else, though I'm not quite certain.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Friday, 05 May 2006, 19:41 GMT
Sorry, should have linked this before... See this bug report:

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/4566
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Saturday, 06 May 2006, 08:39 GMT
Did this happen also with the older unichrome drivers, or did you only use VIA before?

You could try to keep a backup /usr/lib/xorg/modules/dri/unichrome_dri.so, downgrade to the driver you were using before and overwriting it with the new file from the latest unichrome package. If this fixes your bzflag problems, I'll update the DRI in these drivers.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Saturday, 06 May 2006, 17:48 GMT
Happened with older Unichrome drivers and Openchrome drivers as well. Status of the new drivers is unknown - I've stopped playing BZFlag because it requires me to have at least 32 MB of RAM locked up for my video card. I prefer to use 16 MB and a 128 MB AGP aperture; that might not be the best thing for performance, but it frees up a little extra RAM and other games run fine with those settings, so I can only assume bad coding.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Saturday, 06 May 2006, 21:54 GMT
32MB RAM allocated for video and expecting 3D to work for every application is just insane. For example, neverball doesn't even run on my Radeon 8500LE 64MB, but it does run on the 9250SE 128MB, which is in fact the same card with a slowed down memory interface and uses the same drivers... If you don't test these new DRI drivers, there's not much to do about your bugs.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Saturday, 06 May 2006, 22:10 GMT
Err... I *have* used BZFlag with 32 and with 64 MB of shared VRAM, in both cases the spontaneous crashes continued to occur. And the other reason I did not test BZF on the new driver is that, as I mentioned before, xf86-video-unichrome 0.2.5 does funny stuff with my monitor, rendering the colors very washed out and the display ridiculously bright.

BTW, shouldn't any OpenGL app be able to start using system RAM if it runs out of dedicated (or shared) VRAM? That's what the AGP aperture is for, isn't it? :-?
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Sunday, 21 May 2006, 15:15 GMT
Okay, the new Unichrome driver works fine for me now... But BZF still crashes on it wit the same error message.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Monday, 22 May 2006, 01:10 GMT
Alright I think I know the problem... The current version is 2.0.8, and it is a bugfix version - in fact, it apparently fixes several huge bugs, though I can't seem to find the damn changelog. At any rate, they recommend users to upgrade to that version, and the package has been flagged out of date...
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Monday, 22 May 2006, 20:03 GMT
Nope, still happens with 2.0.8. I guess it's a problem with the Xorg driver.
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Monday, 22 May 2006, 20:33 GMT
Does it work with 64MB or 128MB shared VRAM? Somehow AGP texturing isn't used by most drivers. See the neverball example I mentioned above.
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Thursday, 25 May 2006, 00:51 GMT
No option for 128; works with 64, works with 32, crashes on startup with 16.

I'll see if Neverball works on it...
Comment by name withheld (Gullible Jones) - Saturday, 27 May 2006, 22:03 GMT
Neverball works fine, albeit with craptacular sound.

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