Linux Client Bugs ?

(petameta) #1

I’ve noticed some bugs which occured on two PCs i have (both bugs do not occur on Windows):

  • this bug is not that dramatic, but annoying: Sometimes when you go prone and sniper (CovOps and FG42), you have some graphic glitches, some kind of flickering.
  • this bug is really bad: The game crashes after some minutes of play. I can still kill the X-Server (CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE). It’s no problem to restart the X-Server and the game and to rejoin, but it’s really annoying if the game crashes every 5-10 minutes.

My config:

First PC:

  • SuSE 7.2, Kernel 2.4.18
  • AMD 1,8 GHz
  • 512 MB DDR RAM
  • GF Ti4200

Second PC:

  • SuSE 7.3, Kernel 2.4.18
  • AMD 1,2 GHz
  • 512 MB SDRAM
  • GF2-MX

So this could be an issue with:

  • AMD CPUs
  • SuSE
  • NVidia Drivers

Sorry, can’t test it on more systems.

(FallenMatt) #2

This happens to me too.

the game will freeze with sound looping forever but all the other applications are still running properly (i have two monitors so i see stuff like CPU meter still going on the other monitor, just can’t exit ET)

killing X or loging on terminal and doing kill -9 still works.

I’ve noticed that playing on the servers with less players i can play longer before this bug strikes (like 3 full missions) , but once it happened on the main screen, even before i had time to click “play online”.

i’ve reported this bug to the SD bug report email but got no response :slight_smile:

my setup:
Gentoo linux
XFree 4.3 (but also happened with 4.2)
Nvidia GeForce 4600 Ti (drivers 1.0.4363 but happened with older ones too)
kernel 2.4.20-xfs-r3 (but also happened with 2.4.19)
1 GB memory

any chance for a ET test update ?
this crashing is very annoying

(petameta) #3

Good to know it’s not just me.

It’s exactly the same. Sound looping, everything else works fine. When I switch to my first X-Server (STRG-ALT-F7), and then back to the RtcW: ET-X-Server I get a black screen. I can kill the X-Server without any problem.
Sounds like a memory leak or something. The strange thing is, I could play it for two days without a problem, then it started freezing.

Too bad I have to use Windows to play this great game. I hope the next version will be fixed.

(FallenMatt) #4

the bug report email is etbugs@idsoftware.com

believe me or not but i don’t have a way to play the windows version of ET… i just don’t have windows machine laying aorund (except of the laptop that is too slow/old to handle it :frowning:

so the crashing is really bugging me

(petameta) #5

Yep, me too. I hate playing in Windows. In Linux I can just switch to the other X-Server to quickly check mail, ICQ or whatever. This isn’t installed for Windows, as it’s installed for games only, nothing else.

Anyway, there’s no other solution now.

(FallenMatt) #6

whoa… and that’s an idea i didn’t think of :slight_smile:
my geforce drives two monitors so i play on one and see the incomming mail/icq/jabber whatever on the other one…

but that still means quitting RTCW ro reply to email (cause switching running RTCW to the window mode makes it reload map :-/ )

but yeah… suddenly this is an obvious sollution… run second X… just tried and it rocks :slight_smile:

(petameta) #7

Yes and it’s far better than Windows: In Windows you have to press ALT-ENTER. This switches from fullscreen to windowed mode, and you can do usual win-stuff. BUT RtcW (and other idsoft-games) have to reload the map every time you do so (no matter if fullscreen to windowed or vice-versa), which takes some time in ET.

In Linux you just switch to another X-Server, the game stays fullscreen on the other one. So I can quickly check mails during warmup-time :).

Anyway, having two monitors is cool. Must be somewhat impressive to show to your friends that you have a two-monitor linux-solution g.

(FallenMatt) #8

well… i have two 19 inch ones… and one of them came from a trash (err… shed) :smiley:

but… if i am not mistaken you can just hit ctrl-esc in windows which will bring up the task bar so you can send the game in the background or reply to message… whatever…

now… would somebody from SD comment about this freeze-ups ?
i would imagine it also can happen to linux dedicated server (same code)

i know people out there play ET with linux clients with no problem. So what is so special about my setup ? So i could fix it and play ET without game freezeups when i am planting dynamite by the fuel dump :banghead:

up till now i checked two versions of XFree, 3 different versions of nvidia drivers, OSS and Alsa drivers for my Sound Blaster Live, updated all the software to the latest versions, checked two kernels, and run it in different seup (like starting plain X server with only ET running, no other software)

any ideas ? All the other games run with no problem (RTCW, Quake3 arena, ut2003, warcraft3 under winex)

(HellToupee) #9

ive had a few freeze ups not often on mandrake linux 9.1(i think its the best :P), but many crashes when doing certian things like after some map loads or slecting allied side after map reload. Also how do u set up a second x server, sounds like sumthing i wanna try.

(FallenMatt) #10

there are countless ways :slight_smile:

if you have gdm as your login manager then just from gnome menu system tools->new login

this will start new X session on virtual terminal 8 (alt-ctrl-f8 )
you can get back to your previous session on terminal 7 (alt-ctrl-f7)

or… if you are impatient…

xinit /usr/local/games/enemy-territory-test/et – :1

(xG -Abit-) #11

Hmm, I might try me a dual b00t WinXP & Linux Madrake 9.0
New to Linux, but I’ve used it before. I gave up on it when I couldn’t get the latest drivers for pretty much all my hardware. Sounds like things have gotten alot better since then. Sweet… 123+gig hdd should be easy enough to partition a Logical disk and install Linux to that…
I gotta see what you guys are all drewling over. I know I liked the mandrake interface when I setup the last install.
Laterz.

(g00se) #12

I also can’t play more than 5 minutes without crashing. Anyone know what command to pass to get some debugging output?

Game looks awesome…I just wish I could play more. :banana:

(HellToupee) #13

thx ill give it a try, ild been trying to startx from one of the ctrl - alt - f# views.

ya it worked i just used startx – :2

(HellToupee) #14

if u want madnrake 9.1 is much better than 9.0 get it, ild also reccommend yoper.

(petameta) #15

To start a second X-Server, login from the console and type “startx – :1”. If you need a third one, again login and type “startx – :2” and so on …

If you want to autostart the X-Server after login, try this little script:

#!/bin/sh

rm /tmp/profile
ps | grep startx > /tmp/profile
chmod a+rw /tmp/profile

if [ -s /tmp/profile ]
then exit 0
fi

rm /tmp/profile
sleep 1
startx – $1

kill -9 ps | sort -n | head -2 | tail -1 | awk '{ print $1 }'

Make it executable and put in in /usr/bin as xboot for example. Now as last line in your .profile or .bash_profile run this script, for example “/usr/bin/xboot :1” or “/usr/bin/xboot :2”.

Sorry this doesn’t help about the crashes. I really have no idea. I first thought it was a hardware-problem, because as said above it ran two days without a crash, then from saturday to sunday it started crashing. I didn’t change anything, so I thought my CPU-cooler might caugth too much dust or something like that.

There’s no output to the console if wolf crashes. It’s just the usual “x killed y” and then suddenly freeze. So it would be nice to have some debug-output, but I neither know how to enable it.

I tried to unload alsa and play the game without sound, same thing, so it can’t be the sound.

Maybe I’ll try to strace a bit :).

(FallenMatt) #16

just a quick note…
if you run second X server using startx depending on your config it may drag s**load of stuff with it (window managers, kde, gnome etc)… if you have slow system or not much memory this may not be in your interest :slight_smile:

if you start et directly with xinit it wil create new xserver and only ET, X will exit when ET exits…

i usually start it with faillsafe environment - ie. X, xterm and that’s all… xterm to be able to see ET console messages on my second monitor
(makes keeping track of all the chats in game much more nicer)

5 minutes of game play… that’s the max time i managed to play ET today before freezup :confused:

(petameta) #17

I have enough RAM and MHz to handle that s***load of stuff g, though I’d do it that way on slower systems.

I hope they’ll soon release the next version, whatever it is (test or final). This bug is f***cking annoying.

I definately need a second monitor :-).

(g00se) #18

When I select ‘Play Online’ ET resolves the master server name to an IP address but hangs when it never receives the server list. End result is that you cannot browse the server list.

I tried manually connecting to 207.44.194.55:27960 but does not connect. I believe that this is a good server. :???:

I was going to try to do an strace but now I cannot even play. :frowning:

Slackware 8.1 [ 2.4.18 ]
nVidia GeForce2 GTS [ 1.0-4363 ]
XFree86 [ 4.2.0 ]

(FallenMatt) #19

this is just now… the master server doesn’t work right now
so use “connect to ip” option if you know the server ip address

on other note…

i’ve got tired of those freezups…
so i’ve installed Windows ET-test on linux under winex3
had some problems convincing it to use my res (1152x864) winex was complainign that it can’t switch to proper mode
but after enough tries (and killing leftover winex servers) it all works

it is a shame that i need to use winex to play game available for linux :confused:

the only thing i had to disable is dynamic lighting… with enabled the game was slower than in linux (choppy)… works now…

hopefully the ET update/full release will happen soon…

Gentoo Linux
XFree 4.3
kernel 2.4.20-xfs
WineX 3.0-1
AMD XP 2100+
1 GB ram
GeForce 4400 Ti 128Mb driving two 19 inch monitors
200GB hdd space on 4 disk HDD RAID (had too many drives lying around)

(s0kud0) #20

Just a quick question on the xinit second X session stuff… then I run ‘xinit /path/to/some/program – :1’ I get X to launch but the app never launches and X exits immediately… any ideas where I should start looking to troubleshoot this?

Charles