[vtkusers] Compiling vtk on an nvidia card

[Kent Eschenberg]

Luca,

I've had similar problems. Most Linux systems are delivered with Mesa which 
simulates OGL and your graphics card in software. You must make sure that the 
installation of the Nvidia driver replaced the Mesa files. There are several 
situations to check.

1) Compile Time

Run ccmake and find the references to OGL-related files. Then go look at those 
files to make sure they are the ones for the Nvidia card. These are probably in 
/usr/lib and /usr/include (perhaps in subdirectory GL).

2) Run Time

Run "ldd paraview", see which shared objects it plans to use, look at the 
GL-related files, and make sure they are for Nvidia not Mesa. If needed change 
the files or add the paths to the correct files to your environment variable 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

3) Update Time

We've seen the update process replace the Nvidia files with the original Mesa 
files. Check after each update to see what happens on your system.

Kent
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center


Luca Pamparana wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I just installed an Nvidia GeForce 7600 GS card on my machine. However, 
> I do not see any performance increase in vtk on the linux system. 
> However, the windows version of my program runs so much faster! I am 
> wondering if it is the OpenGL libraries that I am linking to.
> 
> Does anyone have experience regarding this? I installed the nvidia-glx 
> and the nvidia-dev packages but wonder which openGL libraries do I have 
> to link to.
> 
> Thanks for any help you can give me.
> 
> Luca