KSP keeps crashing in VAB/SPH, Linux 64 bit, Steam install, I am pretty sure it's an issue with Mesa but I don't know how to fix it

[anu-x]

I have a laptop with the processing power of half a brick. I have no GPU and KSP is using the graphics part of my Intel i5 CPU. I have Ubuntu 22.04 and I have what I think is the latest Mesa driver available on Ubuntu. I have 16GB of RAM and 8GB of swap. KSP version is 1.12.5.

When I am building in the VAB or SPH, occasionally, every few minutes, my entire computer freezes for a minute or so. The music keeps playing, and the computer seems to be taking some input, though when I close the lid it doesn't go into lock mode.

After waiting for the minute or so, one of the following happens:

1. It unfreezes and everything goes back to normal, and I can continue playing the game. When this happens though, it starts freezing more often afterwards.
2. KSP crashes.
3. Discord crashes for some reason, and KSP continues playing.
4. (rarely) It doesn't unfreeze for several more minutes, and it breaks a bunch of things in my computer that I have to fix by rebooting.

I've been googling this for a few days now, and after checking my logs and comparing it to things, I am almost certain that the issue is with my Mesa graphics driver, and possibly something about something called DRI3.

However, I also don't think downgrading Mesa is an available option for me, as I am not very knowledgeable about computers and a lot of important programs have dependencies on it.

Also, I tried setting an environment variable on my steam launcher to disable DRI3 so that it would use DRI2 (which people say don't have that issue) and I checked that steam successfully sets the variable but I am not sure it's working and also the issue still happens with the variable set.

I just tried recreating the issue.

In the SPH, it froze and unfroze once, and then on the next freeze it crashed.

I checked the Player.log file, and this is the last few lines:

[...]

seatExternalCmd added to ship - part count: 8
(Filename: ./Runtime/Export/Debug/Debug.bindings.h Line: 35)

seatExternalCmd added to ship - part count: 7
(Filename: ./Runtime/Export/Debug/Debug.bindings.h Line: 35)

seatExternalCmd added to ship - part count: 7
(Filename: ./Runtime/Export/Debug/Debug.bindings.h Line: 35)

Caught fatal signal - signo:6 code:-6 errno:0 addr:0x3e800031792
Obtained 12 stack frames.
#0  0x007f91a6442520 in __sigaction
#1  0x007f91a64969fc in pthread_kill
#2  0x007f91a6442476 in raise
#3  0x007f91a64287f3 in abort
#4  0x007f91a329d86d in (Unknown)
#5  0x007f91a44160cd in nouveau_drm_screen_create
#6  0x007f91a384e9f6 in __driDriverGetExtensions_d3d12
#7  0x007f91a3849612 in __driDriverGetExtensions_d3d12
#8  0x007f91a32bfbc8 in __driDriverGetExtensions_d3d12
#9  0x007f91a330f7cb in __driDriverGetExtensions_d3d12
#10 0x007f91a6494ac3 in pthread_condattr_setpshared
#11 0x007f91a6526a40 in __xmknodat

I don't think the rest of the log is relevant, since it happens every single time I'm in the editor doing anything, but if you need it I will post the entire file once requested.

I've been stumped with this for a long time, and KSP is not very fun when it crashes every time you want to try something new. If anyone could help me with this, I would appreciate it a lot. Thanks!

 

Edit: I have been informed that "nouveau" (see the line in the log just before it crashes) is some kind of driver for Nvidia GPUs. I don't have an Nvidia GPU, and I don't know whether this was installed on Ubuntu by default or if I accidentally installed it trying to install something else (which I don't think is likely). This might be the cause of the issue, or it might be unrelated.

Edited October 18, 2023 by anu-x
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