Testing Gnome 3 in Ubuntu 11.04 - Fedora 15 with SVN

[Perryg]

Ubuntu builds and works with Unity and Gnome 3. Fedora 15 also works with Gnome 3. Ubuntu suggests that you wait for 11.10 before you use Gnome 3 and Fedora is still in alpha, but for those that want an early taste of what is coming follow these instructions. (openSUSE is not ready for this. I am still trying to figure out why but it is not working for me at the moment). You must be using the latest build from SVN and the SVN Guest Additions are mandatory. 3D acceleration with at least 20MB of vRAM and probably 32MB recommended.
Note: if you install Gnome 3 you will loose the Unity desktop in Ubuntu. I suggest that you install a separate 11.04 guest for this. On fedora if you want to get back to the default just shut down the guest and disable 3D acceleration.

Additional Note: release 4.0.8 has the ability to run Gnome 3 now.


Ubuntu
Installing the Gnome 3 plus shell will show an issue if you do not install from tty. Follow the instructions below to install the Gnome 3 desktop and shell.

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell

Reboot and click on your login name then select the gnome-shell before booting.


Fedora 15
All you need to do to get Gnome 3 to work in Fedora 15 is to disable selinux. They are black listing the VBoxOGL to keep it from working until the release of VBox that has the fixes.



Problems encountered in both.

Forget seamless mode. It will not work. Extensive compositing causes this to fail (at least at this time).

VRDE: Here again since all remote desktop server and clients rely on RFB even if you do connect all you will likely see is the desktop wall paper.

Opening system info seems to freak out both Ubuntu and Fedora and you end up with a WSOD (white screen of death).

Minimizing and maximizing causes black screen. Clicking in the guest window helps but holding the left mouse and dragging around to select the screen is the only work-around I have found.

Using saved state seems to cause a lot of aborts when restarting. You can log off the session and the save state the login screen and it works reliably. Probably why the shutdown is not in the main screen. Even using the alt key to bring up the shutdown feature after opening the menu seems to not work.

Note: I will add more problems and features as I find them.

Ubuntu11.04-Gnome3.png (474.81 KiB) Viewed 15492 times

F15-Gnome3.png (362.26 KiB) Viewed 15449 times

[sheksis]

Wow. This is wonderful. I'd been checking the forums everyday for this post to turn up . Thank you so much for taking time out to find these workarounds.

Ubuntu builds and works with Unity and Gnome 3. Fedora 15 also works with Gnome 3. Ubuntu suggests that you wait for 11.10 before you use Gnome 3 and Fedora is still in alpha, but for those that want an early taste of what is coming follow these instructions.

Fedora has already been in beta for quite some time and is scheduled to get released on 24th.

[Perryg]

Yes I know. but not in VBox
Anyway VirtualBox just released 4.0.8 and it should have this support. But I would bet a dollar that you still need the work-around to get gnome 3 to work.

[sheksis]

But I would bet a dollar that you still need the work-around to get gnome 3 to work.

. Selinux in a VM is something that I didnt even think twice before disabling. But now I am faced with another problem. In 4.0.8, the entire VM aborts when I click 'Activities' in the fedora 15 guest.

[frank]

The SELinux issue was partly solved with VBox 4.0.8. Installing the .pp file still seems to be not entirely correct. Perhaps some SELinux guru could stand up and point to the correct fix.

Apart from that, GNOME 3 with F15 works fine here on a Linux host but we have reports that this is not the case on Mac OS X hosts.

[sheksis]

Frank,
I still get a crash consistently. So, even though I get the nice GNOME 3 ui, the first click inside the window make the VM die.

Heres the data:

Host: Fedora 14
Guest: Fedora 15 beta with the latest updates.

I have attached the log file for the crash.

A point to note is that this did *not* happen with VB4.0.6. (but of course the Gnome Shell rendering in 4.0.6 was too bad to be usable.)

Please let me know if more data is required.

VB-Crash.txt

VB 4.0.8 crash

(55.58 KiB) Downloaded 130 times

[Perryg]

@sheksis,
Have you tried to use the live cd and see if you have issues when running on metal? Tungsten graphics may not be a supported video in gnome3.

Code: Select all

00:00:00.833 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_VENDOR:   Tungsten Graphics, Inc
00:00:00.833 OpenGL Info: Render SPU: GL_RENDERER: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT 

[sheksis]

@sheksis,
Have you tried to use the live cd and see if you have issues when running on metal? Tungsten graphics may not be a supported video in gnome3.

Perryg,
By now I've used livecd many times with Fedora 15 beta and everything works well when its native. However, when I was using your 'disable selinux' fix in 4.0.6 then this did not happen.
Maybe it exonerates the Tungsten graphics driver but I'm no expert in such matters.

[cloverfield]

hi, I got error 'system program problem detected' installing gnome3 on ubuntu 11.04 following the above instruction
host: win7 64 premium
guest: ubuntu 11.04
vbox 4.0.8 + guest additions + 3d enabled.
see the attached screenshot

[Perryg]

That's an Ubuntu error. You can forget the report feature because Ubuntu will see it as not a normal system and refuse the report. Run sudo apt-get install -f . Don't forget the gnome-shell. If you install in a tty it should work without the error though, but no promise.

[sheksis]

On testing, I found that a fedora 15 beta guest on Windows 7 host (with all the GA and Extension packs installed) also aborts. In fact, it doesnt even reach the login screen of Gnome.

[sheksis]

I've been trying to debug this issue but no luck so far. Any pointers as to how I should proceed and what logs do I need to look at?

[Perryg]

@sheksis,
Reading your previous post you said that you were using 4.0.6. If you still are using that version you will not get it to work. As stated it either needs to be the newest code from SVN or you need to install version 4.0.8 and the guest additions needs to be 4.0.8 as well.

[sheksis]

@Perryg

I am using 4.0.8 now with the corresponding GA in guest(VB_Crash.txt I uploaded in a post above confirms this) . The problem of the VM aborting at first click inside the guest still remains. I wanted to rule out any problem on host so I used a windows 7 host and created a new fedora 15 beta VM. There too the first mouse click causes the VM to hang and then abort.
Have no idea what to look at for debugging.

Also, I've seen videos on youtube where its working for people How come its working for everyone and not me :-/

[Perryg]

Supposing that the Windows 7 host was on a different PC, you would still need to see if the graphics adapter can handle Gnome 3. According to Gnome it needs to be a unit that is no older than 4 to 5 years. Other than that we would need to see the guests log file (as an attachment) after the abort, the hosts graphics model, & the guests vboxadd-install.log