(Tourist)

09/30/06 10:39 PM

View in Google Earth

GE freezing on startup

I installed GE on Kubuntu Dapper using builtin ATI driver, everything worked fine (considering not having 3D accel). However, I upgraded my video drivers using ATI's brand & installer. After upgrading the drivers & cold booting, again, the rest of the desktop worked fine. However, now GE freezes on startup on the splash screen (though not locking up puter), using the K menu link, console command, as regular user, and as sudo. I've tried deleting all installed files, both in /opt and in my home dir (uninstall script errors out), then reinstalling. Still nothing. I haven't tried going back to my old video driver yet, but I don't see that changing anything. I also ran GE using strace with the command "strace -o ge googleearth" as a regular user, then ctrl+c to end the prog when it froze. However, I don't understand the output. This is on a Compaq laptop with the ATI Radeon xpress 200M (RS480 5955) w/ 128MB shared mem using driver v8.29.06. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Jeremy

(Tourist)

10/01/06 09:05 PM

Re: GE freezing on startup

I too have an ATI Radeon Xpress 200m, with latest driver from ATI. Turion 64, Dapper 6.06. GE was working fine for many weeks with the ATI driver. Tonight, when I opened GE, i was prompted to update. I started to download the update and the screen went white. Had to hard restart. After restart, part of the.bin file was on my desktop. I opened GE again and it did not prompt to update. It was hang on the splash screen but not locking up the puter. Deleted files in the home directory. Reinstalled with latest version on GE web site. Still hangs.

(Tourist)

10/02/06 09:41 AM

myplaces.kml or Driver is at fault, perhaps

This is a frustrating issue, because it's either Google Earth messing up because of something in your placemarks file, try moving it somewhere outside of ~/.googleearth and see if it starts up.

Or the more likely cause, is simply the ATI driver is causing some fault in the Google Earth graphics code. Rolling back the ATI driver may fix that issue (but certainly isn't the solution)

(Tourist)

10/05/06 11:34 AM

Re: GE freezing on startup

Same Problem here!

I also got a hint from GE to upgrade and did it. Until then it ran fine.
After that it hangs at the splash screen. A kill (-TERM) is still recognized and GE terminates as it should with the TERM signal.

I then updated drivers (ATI Radeon x600, driver 8.29.6, SuSE 10.1 x86_64), the System (from SuSE 10.0 to 10.1), etc. No succes. No errors displayed, etc. So it is hard to find out whats the reason for the hang.

I tried around a lot, but still do not have an Idea. Software like bzflag runs fine, but the framerate with fgl_glxgears dropped fromm 700 fps to 200fps with the newer drivers.

I also tried the previous GE version 4.0.1563, but this also does the same.

Hopefully someone finds the reason. I'll keep searchning ..

(Tourist)

10/09/06 08:28 PM

Re: myplaces.kml or Driver is at fault, perhaps

Tried moving my .kml files like you said, but didn't work.

Do you mean use an earlier version of ATI drivers, or going back to the default ubuntu drivers, san 3d? Thanks in advance!

Jeremy

(Tourist)

10/10/06 05:02 PM

drivers

If you're using the xorg-driver-fglrx from the Ubuntu repositories, I'm assuming that there's an older version contained somewhere on it, though I havn't the foggiest idea where or how. You can probably look it up easily enough though from the Ubuntu forums.

Or if you installed fglrx using the ATI installer, just grab an older version from the ATI website and run it and see if it works, YMMV.

(Tourist)

10/15/06 10:44 PM

Re: GE freezing on startup

I had the same problem installing Suse 10.1 Pro on an AMD64x2 XPLIO machine and thought it was an ATI Radeon on motherboard graphics card problem (same as yours). That card gave me frequent white screens even with the proprietary driver. I thus bought an NVIDIA 7300 and overrode the ATI onboard card but had the same problem. Ouch. I checked and shut down the firewall and still had the same problem. I therefore decided to reinstall Suse 10.1 but this time without installing the firewall and voila Googleearth finally worked and went beyond the "initializing" stage. Odd that I have a Suse 9.2 AMD64 machine and had no problem with the firewall installed. The iptables rules must have changed to block Googleearth initializing. I am behind a firewall of another computer so I am not overly concerned with having no firewall on the new computer. Give it a shot without the firewall and see if it works but not for too long in an unprotected state. I would like to know what the changes in the firewall rules were, if at all, from 9.2 to 10.1.

(Tourist)

10/25/06 05:14 AM

Re: GE freezing on startup

It seems that the problem here is the same as in http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/468731/page/0

Did anyone find a solution?

(Tourist)

11/09/06 01:54 AM

Re: GE freezing on startup

Updated to 4.0.2414, but nothing changed. GoogleEarth still cannot start.

Does anybody read this fora? Specially, does anyone realted to google ever read this error reports?

(Tourist)

11/09/06 12:58 PM

Re: GE freezing on startup

i am reading this forum and would be glad to have a solution as well, as i am having the same problem.
my system is a debian linux sid unstable amd64.
i had googleearth up and running, but this changed with a system upgrade from testing to unstable.
i believe it has to do with the xorg version, but it could have to do as well with the fglrx-driver update for my radeon 9600 pro graphics card or other things.
actually i am not considering downgrading to find out, instead i hope that someone fixes this issue.

(Tourist)

11/14/06 01:01 AM

Re: GE freezing on startup

I think the problem lies in the ATI driver, starting with version 2.28. What you have to do to solve the problem is to copy an older version of the libGL.so.1 library to /usr/local/google-earth (or other path, where GE has been installed). I used the unpacked libGL.so.1.2, version 2.27.10 by placing it in the mentioned directory and renaming it to libGL.so.1. GE seems a little bit slower, but it DOES WORK . In my case, at least

I'm using Debian/etch (x86).

CAUTION: Do not be tempted to overwrite /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 or any other instance of the library already in place, as you might brake OpenGL support for other applications.

Good luck, Cezary.

(Tourist)

11/14/06 02:01 AM

Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_wake)

Well done Cezary, you are a real Star !
i am using libGL.so from ati-driver 2.27.10 now (just for GE as you described it), and it runs soft and smooth now.
Thank you very much !

Julio

Quote:

I think the problem lies in the ATI driver, starting with version 2.28. What you have to do to solve the problem is to copy an older version of the libGL.so.1 library to /usr/local/google-earth (or other path, where GE has been installed). I used the unpacked libGL.so.1.2, version 2.27.10 by placing it in the mentioned directory and renaming it to libGL.so.1. GE seems a little bit slower, but it DOES WORK . In my case, at least I'm using Debian/etch (x86).

CAUTION: Do not be tempted to overwrite /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2 or any other instance of the library already in place, as you might brake OpenGL support for other applications.

Good luck, Cezary.

(First Post)

11/14/06 07:07 PM

Re: Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_w

This also fixed my problem with the futex_wait and ioctl einvar problems.
I snagged the 8.25.18-x86_64 drivers,
unpacked the install.bin:
sh ati-driver-installer-8.25.18-x86_64.run --extract /tmp/ati_8.25.18

and moved the elf32 lib into my ge home:
cp /tmp/ati_8.25.18/arch/x86_64/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2 /home/xxxx/bin/google-earth_4.0.2091

Also, i was having a problem with some missing libraries that ge wasn't erroring out on and that were buried in an strace. Using xtrace made the errors much more apparent.

If you need or care, here is the general setup on this box:
Gentoo GNU/Linux - Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.40GHz - ATI X600(x86_64 v8.30.3)
Portage 2.1.1-r1 (default-linux/amd64/2006.1, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.4-r4, 2.6.18-gentoo-r1 x86_64)
xorg7.1 - e17_oct16 cvs co - xfce 4.2.3

(Tourist)

11/14/06 08:15 PM

Re: Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_w

thanks xsappyx, that worked for me

(Tourist)

11/15/06 07:18 PM

Re: GE freezing on startup

Quote:

I installed GE on Kubuntu Dapper using builtin ATI driver, everything worked fine (considering not having 3D accel). However, I upgraded my video drivers using ATI's brand & installer. After upgrading the drivers & cold booting, again, the rest of the desktop worked fine. However, now GE freezes on startup on the splash screen (though not locking up puter), using the K menu link, console command, as regular user, and as sudo. I've tried deleting all installed files, both in /opt and in my home dir (uninstall script errors out), then reinstalling. Still nothing. I haven't tried going back to my old video driver yet, but I don't see that changing anything. I also ran GE using strace with the command "strace -o ge googleearth" as a regular user, then ctrl+c to end the prog when it froze. However, I don't understand the output. This is on a Compaq laptop with the ATI Radeon xpress 200M (RS480 5955) w/ 128MB shared mem using driver v8.29.06. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Jeremy

I face the same problem! But I'm using Ubunbu Edgy, with ATI driver 2.30.0. GE freezes at initializing.

(Tourist)

11/15/06 11:32 PM

Re: GE freezing on startup

Check this thread: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=683543

(Tourist)

11/18/06 12:50 PM

Re: Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_w

I put this file http://www.ground-impact.com/libGL.so.1.2 in the google earth directory and renamed it libGL.so.1. GE is running again, but so slowly it's hardly worth even trying.

But the comment that someone made about google earth runnign "a little" slower doesn't match my experience. It's "running" at about 1 mile per hour.

What is the long-term solution here? Am I waiting for a new ATI driver, a new GE version?

(Tourist)

11/19/06 02:43 AM

Re: Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_w

Hi fruhwirth,

i don't know what kind of libGL.so.1.2 you are using, it could even be an unaccelerated version of a MESA openGL driver.
If you have an ATI graphics card like i do (Radeon PRO), try taking the libGL.so.1.2 from version 8.27.10.
if you don't have the package at hand, download just that file from here. Don't forget to rename it to libGL.so.1 or create a symlink in your GE directory.
i am using this libGL.so.1.2, GE version 4.0.2414 in a 32-bit chroot'ed environment on a debian sid (unstable) AMD64 box, and have no complaints at all with the performance.
Concerning your question who will fix this issue i would think that both, ATI and GE would be able to fix this issue. I think it is more probable that GE fixes it but who knows.

Julio

(Tourist)

11/20/06 09:42 PM

Still slow

Thanks for the link, Julio. Unfortunately, GE is still running very slowly. I deleted the libGL.so.1 that I was using, downloaded the file from your link, renamed it libGL.so.1, plopped in the GE folder. I didn't really notice any difference between the files. Both made GE run, both made GE warn that I was running in software emulation, and both made GE very very slow.

I have integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200M on AMD64, 1.8 ghz, Ubunta Dapper. I have 128 of RAM out of 500 set aside for video memory.

So sad, so sad. GE ran like a breeze before all this started.

ink_polaroid Administrator

Administrator

(Sysop)

11/24/06 06:55 PM

Re: GE freezing on startup

Quote:

Updated to 4.0.2414, but nothing changed. GoogleEarth still cannot start.

Does anybody read this fora? Specially, does anyone realted to google ever read this error reports?

Yes, we read. For everyone who has ever reported an issue with the Linux client, consider this your personal outpouring of gratitude from me.

(Tourist)

11/26/06 12:18 PM

Re: Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_w

Hey juliokarl2, this worked for me also. At least it got it to working. I get the message that I'm running under emulation mode (even though I'm using ati's binary), and it doesn't seem as fast as it should be, such as under windows (this is a dual boot w/ winxp, and GE runs really smooth on it), but it is working fairly smooth. Since my last post, I've upgraded to ubuntu edgy. I guess I'll have to wait for an official response from google on this. But I'm fairly happy right now. Now, on to other hacks. Thanks!

Jeremy

(Tourist)

11/27/06 07:46 AM

Re: GE freezing on startup

I tried the workaround from wilniuk, and it works here. Even under XGL, with which I am just experimenting here.

I didn't figure it out myself, as there where other problems at the same time: my x600 3D _hardware_ was broken (as I finally found out ..), and 2D had display failures too.
I then just did not try GE it with older ATI Drivers and the new x1600 again, even if I tried to get rid of all other prolems with a rollback from drivers version to version with the old x600.

So - definitely - all works fine unti ATI drivers 8.27.10.

ATIs libGL.so.1.2 from 8.28.8 up to the actual 8.31.5 don't work with GE. They _do_ with bzflag, etc, even when running under XGL! The apps only state (of course ;-)) that DRI is missing, but the framerate is sufficient.

Thank You all, and mainly wilniuk!

Joe

(Tourist)

11/28/06 02:32 AM

Re: Workaround for freezing GE on startup (futex_w

Quote:

Hey juliokarl2, this worked for me also. At least it got it to working. I get the message that I'm running under emulation mode (even though I'm using ati's binary), and it doesn't seem as fast as it should be, such as under windows (this is a dual boot w/ winxp, and GE runs really smooth on it), but it is working fairly smooth. Since my last post, I've upgraded to ubuntu edgy. I guess I'll have to wait for an official response from google on this. But I'm fairly happy right now. Now, on to other hacks. Thanks!
Jeremy

In my opinion, the emulation mode appears not because of the old libGL library, but because of the missing fglrx kernel module. You get no 3D acceleration without it. Make sure it's loaded in /etc/modules (or other place for your distribution) and that it's compiled for your current kernel version. Try to load it by hand first with modprobe fglrx to see if there are any error messages. You can also check if it's loaded with lsmod and get some info with fglrxinfo and fgl_glxgears. Anyway, I think it's a problem with your 3D acceleration in general, not GE.

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