[Paraview] [EXT] Re: v5.0.1 & RealVNC

Wed Apr 13 14:38:25 EDT 2016

Hi Dennis,

> Xlib:  extension "NV-GLX" missing on display "alnx031:15.0".
>
> OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
>
> OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
>
> OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.4.1)
>
> OpenGL extensions:
>

As I suspected, this is telling us is that the VNC server does not have
access to the GPU on the machine it's running on and is falling back to the
Mesa software driver, which does not support the version of OpenGL that
ParaView requires.  Older versions of ParaView (4.x) used a much older
OpenGL stack while the newer 5.x releases have a completely overhauled
rendering backend but it requires support for newer OpenGL versions. So,
even though older ParaView versions worked, they still were not able to use
the GPU and likely had fairly poor performance.  Given that, there are 2
options:

   - Ideal:
      - See if your sysadmins can "fix" or configure the VNC server on the
      workstation to work with the GPU.
   - Workable:
      - Run ParaView using a newer version of Mesa.
         - You can probably use the binaries packaged with Paraview as
         Utkarsh mentioned by adding --mesa-llvm.
         - If this doesn't work, the mesa binaries we ship with ParaView
         are probably incompatible with the Linux distro the server
runs.  Which
         distro does the server run?  We may have a new version
already built that
         you can try to use.
         - Not ideal since it's still using software rendering but better
         than nothing if your admins can't get the VNC server working
with the GPU.

- Chuck

- Chuck

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 2:19 PM, Utkarsh Ayachit <
utkarsh.ayachit at kitware.com> wrote:

> Dennis,
>
> Don't mean to distract this conversation -- I'll let Chuck follow  up
> on the VNC thing -- but a a small sidetrack:
>
> Can you trying running paraview as:
>
> > paraview --mesa-llvm
>
> Does that work?
>
> Utkarsh
>
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Dennis Conklin
> <dennis_conklin at goodyear.com> wrote:
> > Chuck,
> >
> >
> >
> > This is what I get – none of this means anything to me!
> >
> >
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Xlib:  extension "NV-GLX" missing on display "alnx031:15.0".
> >
> > OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
> >
> > OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
> >
> > OpenGL version string: 1.2 (1.5 Mesa 6.4.1)
> >
> > OpenGL extensions:
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Chuck Atkins [mailto:chuck.atkins at kitware.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 11:56 AM
> > To: Dennis Conklin <dennis_conklin at goodyear.com>
> > Cc: ParaView Mailing List <paraview at paraview.org>
> > Subject: Re: [EXT] Re: [Paraview] v5.0.1 & RealVNC
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Dennis,
> >
> > I suspect the GPU is not getting used by the VNC server and thus falling
> > back to a software OpenGL implementation with older mesa and not a new
> > enough OpenGL support.  Different VNC servers on Linux have different
> > capabilities, with some able to reach their underlying GPU and some not.
> > From your VNC session, can you open up a terminal and run: glxinfo | grep
> > '^OpenGL' ?  That should be more telling.
> >
> >
> > - Chuck
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 9:58 AM, Dennis Conklin
> > <dennis_conklin at goodyear.com> wrote:
> >
> > Chuck,
> >
> >
> >
> > Sorry, got additional details from the sysops.
> >
> >
> >
> > We have GPUs in our workstations – he was referring that we don’t have
> GPU
> > clusters for computation.    I understand that the VNC server is running
> on
> > the workstation that I attach to, and yes, we are using the GPU on that
> > workstation to render.
> >
> >
> >
> > FYI,  the workstations have Nvidia K4000 cards and we are running
> realVNC –
> > any chance this is part of your test suite?
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks again, sorry for the confusion, but I am NOT a Linux or VNC guru!!
> >
> >
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> >
> >
> > From: Chuck Atkins [mailto:chuck.atkins at kitware.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2016 6:05 PM
> > To: Dennis Conklin <dennis_conklin at goodyear.com>
> > Cc: ParaView Mailing List <paraview at paraview.org>
> > Subject: [EXT] Re: [Paraview] v5.0.1 & RealVNC
> >
> >
> >
> > Sorry, forgot to cc the list.
> >
> > Hi Dennis, a few questions:
> >
> > Are you using the binaries from paraview.org or did you build it
> yourself?
> > Does the machine with the vnc server have a GPU you're trying use?
> > You said previous versions of paraview worked.  Does that include 5.0 and
> > 4.x or just 4.x?
> >
> > On Apr 12, 2016 4:04 PM, "Dennis Conklin" <dennis_conklin at goodyear.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > All,
> >
> >
> >
> > So I started testing Paraview v5.0.1 Linux and it doesn’t work with
> RealVNC
> > v4, or v5.1.1 or v5.3 (dies with Segmentation fault without even
> displaying
> > a screen).   Earlier versions of Paraview work but not 5.0.1.  I am not
> very
> > familiar with VNC.   Are there graphics or other options in VNC that
> need to
> > be tuned that I could refer to my sysops?
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks for any hints.
> >
> >
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> >
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