opening ksp 1.1.1 crashes linux mint 17.3

[Selwonkak]

On a newly downloaded ksp 1.1.1, when I click start(launch) game in the launcher (64 or 32bit, from ksp file), a black window opens and my computer crashes. I am running linux mint rosa 17.3 cinnamon. No mods, just unzipped to "desktop". I installed it from the ksp website. is this a known bug? is there a workaround or fix?

[Harry Rhodan]

To put three of the workarounds in one sentence: Delete "/home/USER/.config/unity3d", set anti aliasing to 0 in the settings.cfg, try launching the game with the option -force-gfx-direct.

[lugge]

Hi Selwonkak,

have you been able to fix the issue?
I have an similiar issue, using Cinnamon with LM16 and Antergos. For what I've read, unity5 is buggy when used under Gnome. As Cinnamon is some fork of Gnome, maybe the Gnome-issues apply to Cinnamon as well.

Maybe I will install KDE in my Antergos (which I really HATE) and check if the same issue occures.

But first I will try Harry Rhodans solution.

[sal_vager]

If you don't want to use KDE, how about xfce?  It seems to be unaffected by this issue.

It also uses the GTK, so most dependencies should already be satisfied.

[lugge]

Hi sal_vager,

thank you for your reply. Well, KDE, xfce, doesn't really matter. I just want to confirm that this issue is Gnome-related.But in the long-term, I want to run KSP under Cinnamon, which is my favorite DE.

Otherwise, I could just dualboot Win7 as well ;-)

I've read a lot on this "crash-on-start"-issue and will try some workarounds when I'm at home.
I will share my results when I'm done :-)
 

[steve_v]

On 30/04/2016 at 10:58 PM, Selwonkak said:

a black window opens and my computer crashes

Define "crashes". Is this an actual kernel crash or just Xorg / cinnamon desktop going poof?

My guess is that this is the same issue that causes the window to resize to random geometries on startup. I run KDE and I don't get an Xorg / DE crash starting in the (default) windowed mode, but it freaks out my WM enough to stall my session for several seconds. I would not be surprised if the same misbehaviour has more serious effects in other desktops.
Can you run in full-screen mode if you manually set the correct resolution and fullscreen=true in settings.cfg? This works for me, straight to full-screen and no shagging about.

2 hours ago, lugge said:

I have an similiar issue, using Cinnamon with LM16 and Antergos...
Maybe I will install KDE in my Antergos (which I really HATE) and check if the same issue occures.

If you hate KDE so, why not run/test KSP in a separate X session? In theory, this way it will leave your DE entirely unmolested. It's a whole lot less work than installing KDE, and you won't even need it to run a WM, a single xterm will do for starting KSP.
KSP has mouse grab issues if no WM is running, try something like:

xinit /path/to/wm -- :1 vt8 

As for which WM to use, take your pick. You may have the rather ancient TWM (/usr/bin/twm) installed already, that works for me.

 

Edited May 2, 2016 by steve_v
Typos, it's getting late here.

[sal_vager]

1 hour ago, lugge said:

Hi sal_vager,

thank you for your reply. Well, KDE, xfce, doesn't really matter. I just want to confirm that this issue is Gnome-related.But in the long-term, I want to run KSP under Cinnamon, which is my favorite DE.

Otherwise, I could just dualboot Win7 as well ;-)

I've read a lot on this "crash-on-start"-issue and will try some workarounds when I'm at home.
I will share my results when I'm done :-)
 

Well it depends, if it's just KSP crashing and you are using AMD graphics hardware then you'll want to start KSP using the -force-gfx-direct command line switch.

If Gnome is crashing try a lower resolution, or try this.

On 27/04/2016 at 2:45 AM, Psycho_zs said:

My two cents:

Sometimes KSP managed to freeze and crash my X server upon start. This happens because of some rare instant memory leak, so Xorg gets killed by OOM killer. To give it some other target (KSP), I've added a line to my launcher script before KSP exec, like so:

sh -c 'sleep 1 ; echo 15 > "/proc/$(pgrep KSP.x86_64)/oom_adj"' &
exec ./KSP.x86_64 ...

This should make KSP a priority target for OOM killer. Funny thing, no such freak leak happened ever since, so I do not yet know if this can really help X to walk away from it in working order.

 

13 hours ago, Psycho_zs said:

My OOM killer tweak has just successfully saved my X session! Yay!

I also have a theory about freak leak: If random resolution glitch (the one which sometimes gives KSP window size around 60000x60000) occurs further in the loading, it instantly sucks all available memory trying to render anything on that behemoth. At least I glimpsed a piece of presumably giant window just after OOM killer successfully killed this thing ending a long freeze.

[lugge]

OK, KSP starts properly now.

Bad thing, I don't know why.

I didn't use any of your solutions, I just started KSP via console (start.sh) instead of the link on my Cinnamon desktop.

I did this to test if this also crashes my desktop and to get some messages written to stdout. Have to check if I changed something in the settings...

[Selwonkak]

It works! I changed nothing, just opened it today and it works. used the 'normal' launcher from file (not 64 bit).