Mesa Driver Problem??

[Martin109]

I am trying to set up a particular screensaver on a Debian Linux machine running Debian8 (jessie).  It's quite an old laptop, but I've upgraded the memory from 500Mb (in the form of 2 x 256Mb modules) to 2Gb (in the form of 2 x 1Gb modules).  This is the maximum permitted for this machine.

The screensaver (called 'pinion') starts OK but then stops, with an error message.  One version of the error message occasionally appears in the terminal window where I started the screensaver with the command xscreensaver-demo (more on this later).  The error message is:

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WRITE DOMAIN RELOC FAILURE 0x1 6 4
WRITE DOMAIN RELOC FAILURE 0x1 6 4
pinion: ../../../../../../../src/mesa/drivers/dri/radeon/radeon_fbo.c:451: radeon_unmap_renderbuffer: Assertion `ok' failed.

Observing the behaviour in more detail, the screensaver starts OK after the designated delay (2 mins), but then stops, displaying over the frozen image the message:

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WRITE DOMAIN RELOC FAILURE 0x1 6 4
WRITE DOMAIN RELOC FAILURE 0x1 6 4
pinion: ../../../../../../../src/mesa/drivers/dri/radeon/radeon_fbo.c:451: radeon_unmap_renderbuffer: Assertion `ok' failed.
xscreensaver:    signal: 0: child pid 2233 (pinion) terminated with signal 6.

After a few minutes, the screen goes blank, and then after a few more minutes, the screensaver starts again, but freezes again as before.  The pid number in the above message is different each time.  The screensaver just keeps cycling like this.

I thought I would update the mesa drivers (having read the post here).

Following this suggestion, I executed the command:

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apt-get update && apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev

then also:

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apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev

and

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apt-get install freeglut3-dev

However, these updates and installs have not made any difference to the behaviour of the screensaver.

After each start or reboot of the machine, I start the screensaver with the command 'xscreensaver-demo'.  I am prompted to set the screensaver daemon going, which  I do.  Eventually, I would like to find out how to set up this daemon automatically, so that the screensaver is active whenever the system is booted, but want to get it working properly first, before I automate it.

I have a feeling that this behaviour has started after the new memory modules were fitted, but I can't be 100% sure.  The memory has tested OK.

The command 'free -m' results in the following output:

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             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2023        992       1031         35         45        518
-/+ buffers/cache:        428       1595
Swap:         1021          0       1021

Any idea what's going on and what the remedy might be?

[vorsprung]

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=198809

steps 2 and 3

[Martin109]

Thanks, vorsprung, but I'm afraid this isn't working...

Maybe this is because I've had to adapt from the instructions written for ubuntu, as debian isn't the same, or maybe it's because I don't really know what I'm doing!

Step 2 from the instructions: I executed 'xscreensaver-demo' and clicked on cancel, thereby not starting the daemon.  I managed to copy and save the command line instruction:

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pinion -root -spin 1.25 -scroll 2.0152 -max-rpm 1280

The next step (3) was to open the gnome-screensaver theme file.  My system did not have the files he lists.

The command 'locate pinion' yields:

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/usr/lib/xscreensaver/pinion
/usr/share/applications/screensavers/pinion.desktop
/usr/share/man/man6/pinion.6x.gz
/usr/share/xscreensaver/config/pinion.xml

I found the 'Exec=' line in /usr/share/applications/screensavers/pinion.desktop:

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[Desktop Entry]
Name=Pinion
Exec=pinion -root -spin 1.25 -scroll 2.0152 -max-rpm 1280
TryExec=/usr/lib/xscreensaver/pinion
Comment=Draws an interconnected set of gears moving across the screen. See also the "Gears" and "MoebiusGears" screen savers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involute_gear Written by Jamie Zawinski.
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Screensaver;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;

This shows the file with my command line code added to 'Exec=', as per instructions.

I restarted the machine, having made all these changes.  However, the screensaver does not start.  If I do start the daemon, I get the same behaviour as before (stopping with error message, then restarting, etc etc).

As I don't know what I'm doing, I'm at a bit of a loss...

Doing 'locate screensaver' brings up a huge list, but the first few lines caught my attention:

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/etc/pam.d/mate-screensaver
/etc/pam.d/xscreensaver
/etc/xdg/autostart/mate-screensaver.desktop
/etc/xdg/menus/mate-screensavers.menu
/home/martin/.xscreensaver
/usr/bin/xdg-screensaver

Could there be a conflict between mate-screensaver and xscreensaver?

In case it's relevant, the whole listing can be found here.

[vorsprung]

"The MATE Desktop Environment is the continuation of GNOME 2. It provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. MATE is under active development to add support for new technologies while preserving a traditional desktop experience."

So mate-screensaver is probably like gnome-screensaver.  Maybe instead of a gnome-screensaver settings there is a mate-screensaver settings you can use instead?