Godot visually freezes my Linux computer when it starts

Morgoth890

Hello,

I would like to try Godot on my Linux system, but my X environment freezes as soon as I launch Godot. I downloaded the version 3.2.3-stable and I'm on a Debian 10.1.0 laptop.

More precisions: when I launch Godot, everything freezes visually except that I can still move the mouse cursor around. I even see the cursor change from arrow icon to text cursor icon based on what I hover. It looks like I can also switch between my virtual desktops with my keyboard shortcuts (because i see the mouse cursor change based on what is on those desktops). But everything else remains desparately frozen on the screen. I don't even see Godot's window open, I just see what the screen was displaying when I ran the godot command.

I redirected godot command's output to a file and it just says this: Godot Engine v3.2.3.stable.official - https://godotengine.org libGL error: failed to create dri screen libGL error: failed to load driver: nouveau OpenGL ES 3.0 Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 630 (Kaby Lake GT2)

I'm not sure whether it's relevant. I'm using the proprietary NVidia drivers for the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. The drivers seem to be working since I can play some games without too much stagger.

As the keyboard shortcuts still react, I can kill X using those, and then if I start X again things are fine (until I fire up Godot again).

Any idea where this could come from? I've never had this with any other software. I did a full reinstallation of the nvidia drivers in case it was related (which require to blacklist nouveau) but I still have the exact same problem.

Thank you

Megalomaniak

The very first thing I notice is that it fails to load nouveau driver which is the opensource nvidia driver, that I'd recommend avoiding if you need more than just basic display acceleration such as for uses like web browsing or text editing. If at some point you have used the noveau driver then chances are you didn't properly remove it, it's still around and godot is perhaps trying to make use of it, fails and then falls back to your integrated intel gpu.

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Morgoth890

Thanks for your response. I have looked into how to properly disable nouveau in Debian, have followed a few guides, but it's mostly the same everywhere: create a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ with this: blacklist nouveau options nouveau modeset=0

Then running "sudo update-initramfs -u" and rebooting. There doesn't seem to be much more to it. I don't have any nouveau module loaded or anything like that. I don't really know why it's trying to load the nouveau driver.

Something interesting is that I compiled Godot from source, and when I compile it on branch 3.2 I get the same problem, but on master (Godot v4.0) I don't have the problem anymore, Godot launches as expected.

The problem for me is that one of the reasons I wanted to chose Godot was because of Rust language's native bindings, and these don't seem to be available for Godot 4.0 (as stated on the github page), so I'm still kinda stuck.

I could try to see if the Rust native bindings could work in a basic way on 4.0, I'm not against the idea of trying it. I'll have a look into that.

Megalomaniak

@Morgoth890 said:

Something interesting is that I compiled Godot from source, and when I compile it on branch 3.2 I get the same problem, but on master (Godot v4.0) I don't have the problem anymore, Godot launches as expected.

Then it might have been a bug on godot side that has been fixed in master but has not perhaps yet been back-ported to the 3.x branch.

Binsk

Not sure if the graphics card is the actual issue here or not but since you using Nvidia, I believe the current proprietary Nvidia drivers on Linux default to "On-Demand".

This means it will use your integrated graphics unless you specifically tell it to use Nvidia (software such as Steam automatically know to do this when launching games and whatnot). I get that same error in Godot by default when running it and my drivers are set up properly.

Try launching Godot with these environment variables to get it to use your Nvidia card: NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia

You can also set to always use Nvidia in your Nvidia driver panel and then reboot if you don't want to use environment variables.

D'now if it will help but it can narrow down one more thing, I suppose.

Morgoth890

Thanks Binsk, I didn't really know about those variables. I read a bit about it and learned that it was for NVIDIA PRIME Render Offload, which apparently works by default with the proprietary nvidia drivers starting from Debian 11 (and xorg server 1.20.6). So I upgraded from Debian 10 to Debian 11, and I now it works perfectly with the two variables you mentioned!

I first tried it on Debian 10 and I got an error about incorrect graphics card driver setup. So in summary (in case others have the same problem), I didn't have to change my nvidia driver at all, the 2 important things were to upgrade to Debian 11, and to add those variables to Godot launch.

Thanks a lot for the help! I was able to run some Rust code with native bindings, can't wait to learn more about Godot and create my first projects.