Need help getting OpenGL to work

[sam2012]

OS = Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit
Video card = N450GTS Cycllone 1GD5 with Geforce GTS 450

When I first installed Ubuntu (several years ago), OpenGL rendering worked fine. My GLMatrix screensaver rendered well.
Recently, while attempting to install other software for robotics simulation, /usr/lib/libgl.so was showing as red. GLMatrix screensaver stopped working.

I did: sudo apt-get install --reinstall freeglut3-dev build-essential libx11-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa libglu1-mesa-dev and it did not help.

The following commands give these results:

sam@Mecha:~$ glxgears
Error: couldn't get an RGB, Double-buffered visual

sam@Mecha:~$ glxinfo | grep '^direct rendering:'
Error: couldn't find RGB GLX visual or fbconfig

Please help me solve this problem.
(unfortunately, I did not make an image backup of Ubuntu....mainly because I don't know how to do that under Linux....it would have been nice to just reinstall a working image)
Thanks.

[thokra]

Have you installed the proprietary NVIDIA drivers or are you running on nouveau?

[sam2012]

Have you installed the proprietary NVIDIA drivers or are you running on nouveau?

Proprietary drivers

I got glxgears to render by doing the following: export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1
This forces indirect rendering to be used.
I still have a problem though because I need **direct** rendering to be used since the newer versions of the GLX library favor direct software rendering over accelerated indirect rendering.

How am I able to make glxgears work with direct rendering?

[thokra]

First if all, if you demand indirect rendering you fall back to Mesa's software pipe which is nonsense given that you have a GPU which supports much faster rendering. Another thing is that reinstalling

freeglut3-dev build-essential libx11-dev libxmu-dev libxi-dev libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa libglu1-mesa-dev

doesn't help to get a valid GL visual when you're using proprietary drivers since they bring their own implementation and create symlinks accordingly. You need to reinstall the NVIDIA blob. In general their installers are pretty stable under Ubuntu and produce valid installations most of the time.

[sam2012]

First if all, if you demand indirect rendering you fall back to Mesa's software pipe which is nonsense given that you have a GPU which supports much faster rendering. Another thing is that reinstalling



doesn't help to get a valid GL visual when you're using proprietary drivers since they bring their own implementation and create symlinks accordingly. You need to reinstall the NVIDIA blob. In general their installers are pretty stable under Ubuntu and produce valid installations most of the time.

When I did the following:
sam@Mecha:~$ ls -al /usr/lib/libGL*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 487480 2010-01-17 00:07 /usr/lib/libGLEW.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2012-05-23 17:03 /usr/lib/libGLEW.so -> libGLEW.so.1.5.2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 2012-05-23 17:03 /usr/lib/libGLEW.so.1.5 -> libGLEW.so.1.5.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 358456 2010-01-17 00:07 /usr/lib/libGLEW.so.1.5.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 654 2011-07-29 03:02 /usr/lib/libGL.la
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2012-05-26 10:23 /usr/lib/libGL.so -> mesa/libGL.so
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2011-07-29 03:02 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.275.21
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1023120 2011-07-29 03:02 /usr/lib/libGL.so.275.21
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 929838 2010-04-28 23:54 /usr/lib/libGLU.a
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 2012-05-26 10:23 /usr/lib/libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2012-05-26 01:55 /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.070701
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 461488 2010-04-28 23:54 /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1.3.070701

it showed 2 symbolic links that are pointing to NVIDIA drivers instead of the mesa drivers.
How do I make these symbolic links point to mesa? Wouldn't that fix the problem? (this way, wouldn't I have direct rendering?)

What must I do (don't have a clue) to "reinstall the NVIDIA blob"?

[thokra]

You download from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-d...53-driver.html and install. The old installation will be removed before installing the new driver. After that you should be good to go. I noticed you're using 10.04 which is pretty dated. Have you thought of upgrading to 12.04?