[TAG] 2-cent tip: Is your video acceleration system working?

[Ben Okopnik]

Are your games running slowly, even though you have the latest whizbang
video card? Is your Quake action more like a slow-motion low-crawl
through Jell-O than a high-FPS F(irst) (P)erson (S)hooter? You may be
using software emulation of direct rendering (DRI) instead of the real
thing, or may have outdated (or missing) GL libraries.

Here's a simple shell script that brings together all the necessary
tools for checking your system's DRI status. I strongly suggest
referring to the DRI Troubleshooting page at
<http://dri.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/DriTroubleshooting> for a
good guide to fixing any problems you find; it's been of great help to
me several times.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash
# Created by Ben Okopnik on Sun Jun 13 11:03:00 EDT 2004

p="Press 'q' to quit"
q="'direct rendering' should be marked 'Yes'\. $p"
r="Press 'n' to see the next warning or error"
LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo 2>&1|less -P"$q"
dmesg|egrep -i 'agp|drm'|less -P"$p"
less  -P "$r"  -p "\(WW|EE\)" /var/log/XFree86.0.log
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Save it, make it executable with 'chmod +x <name>', run it, and follow
the prompts at the bottom of the screen. (And remember to keep moving as
you fire; the Macron in Level 8 can shoot missiles all day long.)


* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette *
-*- See the Linux Gazette in its new home: <http://linuxgazette.net> -*-