"Desktop effects could not be enabled" on Ubuntu 10.10 x64

[loukingjr]

Have you tried a fresh install of 10.10 with NOTHING added but Vbox extras and then tried turning on Desktop Effects?

Yes and I just finished a new clean install with nothing except (dkms, & build-essential) installed the GAs and booted. 10.10 started with normal effects.
Changed to Extra effects and wobbly works. Shadow works. No complaints from Ubuntu at all.

Hosts video nvidia Quadro NVS 150M

I also decided to do a clean install adding nothing but dkms & build-essentials. the fresh install works just as it should. now all I have to do is figure out what's wrong with my other install of 10.10 and why installing the 3.2.10 GAs broke the desktop effects in my 10.04 install.

but, Perry's right. they do work on a fresh install.

[Perryg]

And fairly fast too. This is from a Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha that I nursed all the way to release.
perry@perry-meerkat:~$ glxgears
598 frames in 5.0 seconds = 119.546 FPS
604 frames in 5.3 seconds = 114.110 FPS
477 frames in 5.0 seconds = 95.300 FPS
642 frames in 5.0 seconds = 128.274 FPS
657 frames in 5.0 seconds = 131.367 FPS
640 frames in 5.0 seconds = 127.908 FPS
659 frames in 5.0 seconds = 131.639 FPS

It really looks to me like Ubuntu, and Xorg 1.9. I looked on the Ubuntu site and they are saying that not all video cards will work in 10.10 and point to xorg as the reason. Not sure but I am really leaning to the Ubuntu side for a fix.

[dave78ab]

Doesn't work for me with my gtx 480 fresh install or otherwise.

[scottku]

After doing "apt-get install dkms build-essential" and installing the 3.2.10 GA, it is working (sort of)! I guess I should have read the instructions more carefully. I've been using Ubuntu in virtualbox for years, but I guess 10.10 is the first time I've done a fresh install recently. Why doesn't the GA install script print out an error if these things aren't present? Or, maybe it did and I just didn't see it?

All my problems are still not solved, however. glxinfo repeatedly reports this error:
OpenGL Warning: Unsupported GLX Call: glXGetConfig with attrib 0x8010, ignoring...

And, OpenGL programs based on GLUT fail with this message (with varying values for 0x....) :
OpenGL Warning: XGetVisualInfo returned 0 visuals for 0x8ab0250

I'll update the issue I created.

[Perryg]

@scottku,
The only suggestion that I can give you at this point is make sure that your hosts Video driver is up-to-date. As I said 10.10 has changed a lot of things in video rendering and it may be that the driver manufacture has an update to fix your problem. I don't have a machine that uses ATI here to test this on so I will need to leave this to someone that does.

[dave78ab]

Ah, ok, that actually does work. Installed with apt-get install dkms build-essential, and reinstalled GA on top of it. Reboot, and it works. Good enough for me until they find a real solution for the problem. Thanks!

[prismra]

I tried installing dkms build-essential then re-installing the guest additions then rebooting. Still cannot enable desktop effects. I'll try on my home machine tonight and see if it is a graphics card issue just on this Intel-based one.

[loukingjr]

@scottku,
The only suggestion that I can give you at this point is make sure that your hosts Video driver is up-to-date. As I said 10.10 has changed a lot of things in video rendering and it may be that the driver manufacture has an update to fix your problem. I don't have a machine that uses ATI here to test this on so I will need to leave this to someone that does.

turns out in my case, the reason ubuntu 10.04 broke was because I didn't have dkms OR build-essential installed. I fixed that problem. in my original 10.10 install, I am still having the issue of windows wanting to move to the right, plus, when I looked I realized I had left the VB OSE GAs in. Took those out but didn't help. and now, when I try to update to the new kernel that failed plus I am getting a new error message in synaptic...

"W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://extras.ubuntu.com maverick Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 16126D3A3E5C1192

W: Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/Release

W: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

I would try and just install the system but I have tweaked this so much.

[Perryg]

I know I for one warned about using the OSE version of the GAs to get by for a while. I have heard of too many horror stories by doing this. There is just no way to know what the maintainer has added or done in regards to depends. I would suggest that you use synaptic package manager to see if you can purge (complete removal) anything VirtualBox from the guest. reboot and then add the proper GAs again. Other than that you will need to go on a hunting mission to find what was installed (and don't forget symlinks) and remove them.

[loukingjr]

I know I for one warned about using the OSE version of the GAs to get by for a while. I have heard of too many horror stories by doing this. There is just no way to know what the maintainer has added or done in regards to depends. I would suggest that you use synaptic package manager to see if you can purge (complete removal) anything VirtualBox from the guest. reboot and then add the proper GAs again. Other than that you will need to go on a hunting mission to find what was installed (and don't forget symlinks) and remove them.

well, I decided just to copy over my fonts and desktop pics, themes and so on to the new working install, and deal with installing a few apps.

[scottku]

@scottku,
The only suggestion that I can give you at this point is make sure that your hosts Video driver is up-to-date. As I said 10.10 has changed a lot of things in video rendering and it may be that the driver manufacture has an update to fix your problem. I don't have a machine that uses ATI here to test this on so I will need to leave this to someone that does.

Thanks for the advice, Perryg. I updated my video card drivers on my Windows host. But, it didn't help.

To recap, I get error messages when I run glxinfo in 10.10 (even though desktop effects work) and OpenGL programs compiled against glut seg fault.

To check if it was just 10.10, I started a fresh install of 10.04. That got rid of the error that glxinfo prints out, but GLUT programs still seg fault. (Note: I used run to GLUT programs on 10.04 with no problem in virtualbox on the same computer---but I somehow lost the VM that I had working).

Do OpenGL GLUT programs work for anybody else who has 3D acceleration? All that is needed is the freeglut3 and freeglut3-dev packages on Ubuntu, "gcc -o gluttest -lglut -lGL gluttest.c" and the code on another thread:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic. ... 44#p137544

[prismra]

I installed dkms and then ran a sudo apt-get upgrade and noticed a BUNCH of updates (including kernel) being pulled down. I reinstalled GA, rebooted and now I have desktop effects running on my home machine (GTX 460).

[pros]

Desktop effects do not work in 10.10,
and stopped working in my previously installed 10.04 guest the moment i installed 3.2.10 guest additions.
Host ubuntu 10.04.1 64bit, guests 10.10 64bit, 10.04 32bit, nvidia card

Installing dkms and build-essentials as suggested in the thread in my guest systems, works around the problem.

Graphics card

Code: Select all

lspci -nn | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation GT216 [GeForce GT 220] [10de:0a20] (rev a2)

Nvidia proprietary driver version 260.19.06 installed using https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates

Seems that the problem is indeed triggered by guest additions 3.2.10 http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/7572

2010-10-12 22:33:43 changed by virusek ¶

I had same issue. Is caused by src/vboxguest-3.2.10/Makefile inside guest additions package - it does not compile vboxvideo DRM kernel module. Workaround is to unpack installer, then compile and install driver manually, permanent fix is to make changes to Makefile to correctly compile and install vboxvideo module then make new packages.

[weconsultants]

Ok, that actually does work for me also. I had updated my current 10.04 to 10.10 Ubuntu and could not enable Desktop Effects. I am running a host that is Windows 7 Enterprise x64. As suggested I installed dkms, build-essential was already installed, then reinstalled GA on top of it. Rebooted and it works. Thanks for that suggested resolution.

[weconsultants]

Ok, that actually does work for me also. I had updated my current 10.04 to 10.10 Ubuntu and could not enable Desktop Effects. I am running a host that is Windows 7 Enterprise x64. As suggested I installed dkms, build-essential was already installed, then reinstalled GA on top of it. Rebooted and it works. Thanks for that suggested resolution.

Will I have to take back my comment that it worked. It seemed to work yesterday as I mentioned. Today when I rebooted 10.10 I was having major problems and I think it is with Compiz. My 10.10 console lost half of it's display area(left side). It was just blacked out. On the right I could see the normal stuff that would display. I ran updates and a never Compiz was installed. I rebooted and was in the same place after I installed 10.10. I can not enable Desktop effects which is fine for me now because I can at least can use the virtual machine. I have Compiz installed and that seems to be having a problem. I can just leave it disabled until a resolution is available. I will go back and read this thread and make sure if this problem was mentioned.

EDIT: I am going to uninstall VirtualBox 3.2.10 and reinstall the VirtualBox 3.2.8 to see if I can change The Desktop Effects.