Arch Linux: Possible graphical bug?

[olorin92]

Hi all,

When using the .AppImage file in Arch Linux, I cannot for the life of me get my house preview showing anywhere. The picture of my house is set as the background, it's set to fill, and it's 100 brightness, but the right panel shows nothing.

It's as if the area that normally shows the picture hasn't actually loaded, because I only see the grey of the window underneath (not the usual black when an image hasn't been loaded).

I've attached a screenshot to show what I see.

I'm assuming that I'm missing a package or there's something weird with my graphics setup, but can't quite figure it out.

I'm using the 2018.33 version of XLights, but have also tried on the 2018.18 version and got the same issue.

[debenham]

Can you please upload your /tmp/xLights_l4cpp.log logfile for me?
Also - try moving ~/.xLights aside (such as rename it to ~/.xLights-old ) as that contains all your settings and so will reset things to default in case there is some odd config issue. If that doesn't help you can move the file back to restore your settings

[olorin92]

Can you please upload your /tmp/xLights_l4cpp.log logfile for me?
Also - try moving ~/.xLights aside (such as rename it to ~/.xLights-old ) as that contains all your settings and so will reset things to default in case there is some odd config issue. If that doesn't help you can move the file back to restore your settings

Hi debenham,

Thanks for the speedy reply! I did think of that, but unfortunately had no luck when moving/removing that folder. I've attached that file as requested! Having a look at it, I can't see any warning or error messages for the last time I ran xLights, so nothing is jumping out to me at least!

[debenham]

Nothing jumps out to me either.
I'll try and reproduce - what version of arch linux are you running, what desktop environment are you using and what GPU are you using?

[olorin92]

Nothing jumps out to me either.
I'll try and reproduce - what version of arch linux are you running, what desktop environment are you using and what GPU are you using?

So that's where it gets a bit iffy! I'm on the latest Arch Linux, latest Gnome, but the graphics is a bit of a weird setup. I'm running it on an XPS 15, which has a GTX 1050, but I've disabled that with bbswitch and should be using the onboard graphics exclusively.

[debenham]

Ahh - graphics cards can mess all sorts of things up due to how wxwidgets/gtk2/GL interact
Do other GL applications work okay (such as glxgears as a test)?
In xlights under the settings menu you can try forcing the version of OpenGL used - maybe try playing with that to see if it helps.

[olorin92]

Ahh - graphics cards can mess all sorts of things up due to how wxwidgets/gtk2/GL interact
Do other GL applications work okay (such as glxgears as a test)?
In xlights under the settings menu you can try forcing the version of OpenGL used - maybe try playing with that to see if it helps.

Yep glxgears works fine, and I did try playing around with the OpenGL settings too - no joy there either!

[debenham]

getting arch linux running with GL under virtualbox is not working for me (some issues with vboxvideo xorg module not being available anymore for arch)
So I haven't been able to re-produce - but I do know that there are some others using xLights on arch so it 'should' work.
My best guess is that the onboard graphics and the nvidia graphics are getting confused with each other.
Can you try it with the GTX active?

[olorin92]

Still no luck!

Not sure what it is about my environment, but there's definitely something XLights doesn't like

[dkulp]

It's very strange... the GL canvases are being created.   However, they aren't being asked to actually "paint".   Thus, the GL context isn't being created.   

I'm having a similar issue on OSX Mojave, but a simple click on the panel causes a repaint so it more or less fixes itself with a mouse click.

[olorin92]

It's very strange... the GL canvases are being created.   However, they aren't being asked to actually "paint".   Thus, the GL context isn't being created.   

I'm having a similar issue on OSX Mojave, but a simple click on the panel causes a repaint so it more or less fixes itself with a mouse click.

Odd...I mean for now it's not a huge issue as I can just my windows VM, but I'd much rather be using the Linux box! I also don't seem to be able to add timing marks in a basic animation sequence - whether or not that's related I'm not sure.

[olorin92]

Ok so running the AppImage with optirun seems to allow the house preview to show correctly. This forces the application to use the discrete graphics card, so I'm not sure why the intel graphics seem to be having such an issue with running xLights, but Nvidia graphics is doing fine.

Interesting!

[olorin92]

OK I might have spoken too soon...I don't seem to be able to use any keyboard shortcut (ctrl c and v for copy and paste for instance), and as a result I can't manually add timing marks - hitting T does nothing when running a sequence.

Any ideas?

[Ebuechner]

I don't know if it'll solve all your problems but try closing Xlights and then delete your key binding file from your show folder then reopen Xlights.

[Gilrock]

Hitting T never does anything you gotta hit t.