[SOLVED] Windows and cube sides not rendered

[tatsumori]

Hi all,
I searched all the forums, but no one seems to have had this problem before.
I recently updated my gentoo-box, including couple of libs, xorg and ati-drivers. After finishing I had to find out, that xorg-server 1.3 won't work with fglrx-drivers, so I downgraded that. Everything works just fine.
Except...
I can start Xgl.
I can start Beryl.
Everything works just fine. No errors, no hangs, no whatsoever.
But when I try to place a window on the cube (DISPLAY=:1 xterm) nothing shows up.
The cube remains blue - and blue only.
However it gets even funnier: When I hover my mouse over where the window should be, it changes into the text-cursor. This tells me, that the window is being created and everything - it just won't show up.
Also when I fire up a desktop-manager like kdesktop the cube vanishes. Well, not completely. The top and the bottom are still there, but the sides vanish.

Since I do not want to waste you guys time this is what I tried so far:
Reinstalled and/or downgraded ati-drivers, xorg-server, randrproto and libXrandr.
Removed .beryl and had it recreated.

Any ideas or hints?
All help would be greatly appreciated. I'm really stuck here.
If you should need any further info please do not hesitate to ask.

Thanks a lot in advance!

[adamk]

Are you sure you have direct rendering working on the non-XGL server? Take a look at your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file and confirm that direct rendering is enabled.

Adam

[tatsumori]

Hi,

yeah, I checked. The logs turn up nothing abnormal and glxinfo returns
[code:bd4a6]direct rendering: Yes[/code:bd4a6].
As I said, everything else works like a charm.
I can rotate the cube and everything. Even my keybindings seem to work.

[w23]

Looks like [url=http://www.opencompositing.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=87:f9ddb]I have this problem too on nvidia[/url:f9ddb].

[tatsumori]

Yes, sounds similar.
So I guess this is not a driver-related issue but something more basic.
I just recompiled beryl for the x-th time with no effect. Also did a [code:37f67]genlop -l[/code:37f67] and manually downgraded all the libraries to the version they were before the update. That didn't work.
So I thought that the xorg-server might be linked against them - however rebuilding it as well didn't change anything.

Once more:
All help would be extremely appreciated!
I'm actually starting to think about wiping my disk and reusing a 10-days-old binary backup just to make it work.
(and then upgrade about 150 Packages manually to see when breakage occurs. Sounds like a fun weekend. :mrgreen: )
But I hope that there is a better way.

[ianni67]

I apologise in advance in case I'm just adding noise.

Isn't this problem somewhat related to the so-called "white cube" issue, largely addressed on the web in the last days? This seems to be an issue recently blown-up with Beryl and Xgl.
I incurred in this issue as well, and found a solution with the help of Adam, who gave me an head-up, and an italian blogger who made available a build of Beryl (very up-to-date!) which does not suffer from the white cube issue (in italian, "Il cubo bianco").
This is the link: download the package and run the shell script in the package
[code:b0da2]sh ./beryl-svn.sh[/code:b0da2], then follow the (english) instructions.
Finally, do the usual [code:b0da2]sudo apt-get install -f[/code:b0da2].

Hope this helps!
Thanx telperion (the italian blogger) for his help.

[tatsumori]

Isn't this problem somewhat related to the so-called "white cube" issue...

Hi,
thanks for your enthusiasm.
However I don't think we are facing the [W]hite[S]creen[O]f[D]eath.
I just rechecked all the forums on this. Basically there are three things that make me think this is not WSOD:
1) None of the well known workarounds (--use-copy, preloading...) changed anything for me
2) I'll take any bet, that my current build is more actual then the build you recommended. I completely rebuilt Beryl from git myself just about 18 hours ago. ;)
3) Well, this sounds stupid - but my screen was never actually "white". I either hat that standard-beryl-blue that shows up as long as you don't put anything on the screen or the sides completely vanished. Recently I managed to start kdesktop (NOT KDE. Repeat, not KDE. Just the dm.). Sometimes the sides won't disappear but my wallpaper and all the icons will be drawn just fine. However the problem persists. There seems to be no logical reason for this. If I then restart with the same options sometimes the wallpaper is there, and sometimes the cube is gone.

But let's all look on the bright side: Since I switched to gentoo and started using beryl I never needed crossword-puzzles anymore.
Enough riddles to solve with my system. ^^

EDIT: Since there seems to be a lot of confusion regarding the nature of my (our) problem I attached a screenshot. After all a picture says more than a thousand words. And please don't ask me how I was able to take that screen without seeing any windows. :roll: It took a serious amount of hotkeying and blindklicking.

[ianni67]

uh ehr... well, I already apologized in advance for adding noise, right? Anyway, the link I posted might be a fast cure for those who suffer from white cube ;-)

[Jupiter]

do you have transparent cube, blurfx and, Antialiasing enabled in beryl?
and what happens if you disable them?

[tatsumori]

do you have transparent cube, blurfx and, Antialiasing enabled in beryl?
and what happens if you disable them?

Hi, thanks for trying to help!

I had transparent cube and blurfx enabled. Antialiasing was off.
So I turned those two off and retried.
The result is pretty much the same. However the sides don't vanish now - instead they are just black.
Makes sense to me. I guess they were black in the first place but transparency made them vanish.

[Jupiter]

do you have transparent cube, blurfx and, Antialiasing enabled in beryl?
and what happens if you disable them?

Hi, thanks for trying to help!

I had transparent cube and blurfx enabled. Antialiasing was off.
So I turned those two off and retried.
The result is pretty much the same. However the sides don't vanish now - instead they are just black.
Makes sense to me. I guess they were black in the first place but transparency made them vanish.


did you try an adjust how much opacity in transparent cube and try again
is your background supposed to be black

[tatsumori]

did you try an adjust how much opacity in transparent cube and try again
is your background supposed to be black


Changing the opacity-level has no effect.
My background is actually a picture of some leaves. Definitely not black. ;)

I did yet another revdep-rebuild today, reinstalled drivers, recompiled all libs that X links against, recompiled X, rebuilt beryl from git...
Nothing changed.
I'm still pretty much stuck. :(

[tatsumori]

Don't ask me why and how, but I solved it.
I just heard that geek-voice in me calling "try again" for about the 100st time today. So here is basically what I did:
I riped ati-drivers out of my system. Then I upgraded to the most recent version available from ati.
I had done that a couple of times before. But anyway, lets continue.
I did it on a clean reboot this time - I guess some modules managed to survive.
So after rebooting I reinstalled fglrx-drivers.
Then i rebuilt freeglut (it links against libGL.so, which is provided by fglrx - however I had to place a symlink. libGL.so was placed in quite some abnormal folder. freeglut didn't find it.)
Next -> rebuilding xorg-server
Finally -> rebuilding Xgl

In fact emerald is still a mess-but that is only a minor problem. I dealt with emerald before.
Thanks for all your guys enthusiasm. Let's all keep up the great community I experienced back in the beryl-forums and supply compiz with the fire of daily svn/git-plugins that we all learned to love. :roll: