Binary package hint: gnome-control-center
1) $ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10
2) $ apt-cache policy gnome-control-center
gnome-control-center:
Installed: 1:2.24.0.1-0ubuntu7.1
Candidate: 1:2.24.0.1-0ubuntu7.1
Version table:
*** 1:2.24.0.1-0ubuntu7.1 0
500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
1:2.24.0.1-0ubuntu7 0
500 http://fi.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
3) What I expected to happen: No resource problems and/or continuous error messages to log on an idle system with default settings
4) What happend: The message
"[driAllocateTexture:636] unable to allocate texture"
is written to /var/log/gdm/\:0.log about once a second even when the system is idle and no graphics intensive application is running.
Without being an expert in this area, I understand this means that the resources of graphics card have been exhausted.
I believe this can be seen by the end user e.g. by drastically reduced scrolling performance e.g. in a normal gnome terminal (but I have not investigated this claim very carefully). Anyway I think writing an error to a log file about once a
second in a clean system is not acceptable.
Further details
Hardware: Laptop IBM T40
Graphics card:
(--) PCI:*(0@1:0:0) ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] rev 2, Mem @ 0xe0000000/0, 0xc0100000/0, I/O @ 0x00003000/0, BIOS @ 0x????????/131072
Software: a plain intrepid installation with all recommended updates and only 3 minor additional packages installed
Work around: Go to System --> Preferences --> Appearance // Visual Effects and change the default setting "Normal" to "None"
Without understanding much of that topic I made the following guesses:
- The "Normal" visual effects of 2008 are just too heavy for an approximately 5 year old laptop. (I understand business laptops like this one are not optimized for graphics performance anyway)
- Because the graphic card runs out of resources the error occurs continuously
If my guesses are correct the only solution is that Ubuntu must recognize during installation (or at each boot), whether the graphics card is powerful enough to handle "Normal" visual effects. If not, they should be disabled by default, because the average user
- will not read the log files,
- will not understand what the error message [driAllocateTexture:636] means (nor do I)
- and will not be able to draw the conclusion that visual effect should be disabled
I further guessed that gnome-control-center might possibly be responsible for the default settings, because it allows the user to change the visual effects. If this guess was wrong, the bug needs to be redirected to another package, whoever is
responsible for choosing the default value)
(Of course if my guesses above that the visual effects will just not reasonably work on "such an old" laptop graphics card were wrong, it might be possible to correct the implementation of the visual effects. Then again, the bug should be redirected to whoever causes the error message)
not a gnome-control-