The Linux compatibility thread!

[FuzzyLlama]

In Linux, since so many shortcuts in DEs use Alt + something, the copy button is Right Shift. I just found this out a few days ago myself.

[Patupi]

Oh cool, thanks FuzzyLlama. That'll help a lot.

[FuzzyLlama]

So I realized I had never made the changes to the config file specified (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65130-Graphic-setting-and-what-they-means?highlight=graphics+settings), reducing draw distance on oceans. This worked miracles, and now my FPS stays a smooth 50-60 fps anywhere I look. (I turned up shadow cascades and light to balance out and keep me just shy of 60 fps.)

[Patupi]

You know if you right click the #(number) on the right of a post you can copy the address of a post specifically? With that address your link goes straight to the post rather than just the beginning of the thread, or that page. I'm just saying as I vaguely remember about the ocean config and I don't think it's specific to the menu, but just in the config and the link you gave goes to the beginning of that thread where they show the menu and then explain what each item does. The terrain detail option on that menu will lower ocean detail, but also makes the mountains dull

I'm wading through that thread now to remind me what the config line to search for was again. It's been a while since I did that, in on my new machine it is rather choppy. Probably because of no dedicated graphics card and it's just on the edge of what KSP needs.

[FuzzyLlama]

Woops, yeah. I don't even think that is the correct thread. Anyway, in y our settings.cfg, scroll down to the very bottom. Then, scroll up. You'll see a list of planetary bodies, each one enumerating draw distances and other settings. The important ones are KerbinOcean, EveOcean, and LaytheOcean draw distances.

On another note, I'm trying to get Kerbal going on some older Dell OptiPlex workstations at school. (The children really want to get into rocketry!) They have Radeon HD 3450 cards and are dual-booting Ubuntu and Win7. I'd really like to keep them on a Linux kernel as much as possible, but at lowest settings at 1024x768, the FPS just looking around at the spaceport is ~2 fps. I know it's an older card, and I know that the open source radeon drivers perform a little slower than proprietary... but, darn it, this just doesn't seem right! Any ideas?

[sal_vager]

AMD dropped support for the 4000 and older cards, the open drivers are your only option unless you use an older version of X.

Didn't the mesa drivers get a big speed boost recently? May be worth looking into that and seeing if there's a newer driver than what you have on those systems.

Edited March 28, 2014 by sal_vager
Removed a wayward o

[Orionblade]

AMD dropped support for the 4000 and older cards, o the open drivers are your only option unless you use an older version of X.

Didn't the mesa drivers get a big speed boost recently? May be worth looking into that and seeing if there's a newer driver than what you have on those systems.

I just (re) built my whole system. I'll hit y'all with the specs and then what's going on.

AMD 6-core processor (FX6700?) at 3.5ghz

8gb Kingston ram on 2 sticks

Gigabyte "ultra durable" GA-970A-D3P motherboard with 970 chipset

ATI Radeon 7770 graphics card pumping two monitors.

Ubuntu, fresh install (12.04 LTS)

I just updated mono-complete with the sudo apt-get install command. That did nothign to fix this problem.

I booted up, launched my driver update process, and as soon as I had the AMD catalyst thing rolling and got my dual monitors set up, I double-clicked the freshly unpacked zip file and it laoded. I went in and turned down the volume, and all the menus seemed really slow to load - the graphics were FAST and CRISP, so I doubt this is a graphics issue, but it finally locked up when I went in to create a new game. I was unable to change the name from "Default" and the whole thing just locked up.

I went ahead and rebooted, installed my OS updates that Ubuntu was screaming at me to update, and when I go to open up KSP, none of the executables/binaries work. KSP.exe in mono, the x86, x86_x64, nor the launchers will open. I double click, i right click and "run", nothing. I checked file permissions and made sure EVERYTHING was read/write/etc. and still nothing.

Also, I'm noticing my clicking is a little weird. When I click on the gear menu up top in ubuntu on my left hand monitor, i have to click and hold for the menu to stay open (for shutdown, update, restart, log out, etc.) but on my right menu, i click it once, and it stays open until i click an option or click out of the context box.

I've even tried moving the windows around between the monitors, and the click issue doesn't seem to be directly related to not being able to simply double click the icon and open the executable.

Any ideas? What files should I be posting/options/etc. so someone can make a better educated guess? Did I miss this issue when I scrolled through the other 50+ pages?

I'm at a loss.

Hepl. Plz.

Thanks in advance.

Rion

##Update - the clicky flicker thing no longer occurs after another restart... I just noticed that the drop down menu does in fact stay put as expected, doesn't close automatically. Thanks again##

Still playing with it... I now run/get the following:

rion@WetSparkWorkstation:~/Desktop/KSP_linux$ mono KSP.exe

Cannot open assembly 'KSP.exe': File does not contain a valid CIL image.

Annnnnd... when I try to run the other "executables", the OS returns:

rion@WetSparkWorkstation:~/Desktop/KSP_linux$ ./KSP.x86

bash: ./KSP.x86 No such file or directory

And when I just type in the file name, or try to sudo it... it always comes back with command not found.

Am I just being completely stupid?

also, an ls -l of the desktop reveals the files exactly where they should be, and the permissions for the launchers, and all KSP.x86 variants are as follows: -rwxrwxrwx 1 rion rion [filesize] [date] KSP.*

(I'm rion)

Hope this helps. Me. You. Whomever. I hope I'm just being stupid and haven't fried my HD or something. I'm really kinda jumpy since this is a rebuild of a toasted system that turned into a completely new pile of hardware very quickly.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Orionblade
Oops.

[birdspider]

Hello,

I was mucking around with KSP recently because I wasn't satisfied with the games performance (I seemed that something was wrong).

That is I tracked cpu usage and stuff and things didn't seem to fit. (60% one core only, while having yellow time at lauchpad).

I tried http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59005-0-23-Release-2-15-Active-Texture-Management-Save-RAM-without-reduction-packs! and various linux tweaks and finaly reached out for the radeon.* kernel-mod parameters.

First of all I wanted to see what was enabled:

modinfo -p radeon ... well I didn't see exactly what was enabled so I found a script (see below).

EDIT(this should also work: cat /sys/module/radeon/parameters/pcie_gen2)/EDIT

The param of interest was radeon.pcie_gen2 which was set to -1 which seems to mean "auto", whatever that means.

This param is well known and not knew, I just assumed that it would be 1 by default these days.

I added radeon.pcie_gen2=1 to my bootloaders kernel-line (options root=/dev/sda4 rw radeon.dpm=1 radeon.pcie_gen2=1 in my case).

You can add this in grub by pushing 'e' in your boot menu, change the line and then 'b' to boot.

To make it persistent add it to your bootloader(grub,lilo,syslinux,gummiboot or whatever)

This made a difference. I can now have smooth shadow (32 shadow cascades, 32 pixel light source) and green time text.

Maybe this is useful for someone.

[birdspider@blackbox bin]$ cat modparams 
#!/usr/bin/env sh
module="$1"
 echo "Module: $module"; \
 if [ -d "/sys/module/$module/parameters" ]; then \
  ls /sys/module/$module/parameters/ | while read parameter; do \
   echo -n "Parameter: $parameter --> "; \
   cat /sys/module/$module/parameters/$parameter; \
  done; \
 fi; \
 echo; \

[birdspider@blackbox bin]$ ./modparams radeon
Module: radeon
<snip>
Parameter: msi --> -1
Parameter: no_wb --> 0
Parameter: pcie_gen2 --> 1       <-------------------------------------                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Parameter: r4xx_atom --> 0                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
<snip>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Things I also tried:

LC_ALL=C R600_HYPERZ=1 R600_STREAMOUT=1 R600_SURF=1 R600_TILING=1 R600_GLSL130=1 ./KSP.x86_64

see: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon#Tuning which didn't seem to do anything.

ArchLinux x64, ATI HD6850, 8 GB

[Orionblade]

Umm... where do I do this? I'm slightly lost.

I was a DOS baby, so command line is my style, but it's been a long time since I admin'ed a POSIX system. Feel free to PM me if this isn't quite pertinent to the thread.

Hello,

I was mucking around with KSP recently because I wasn't satisfied with the games performance (I seemed that something was wrong).

That is I tracked cpu usage and stuff and things didn't seem to fit. (60% one core only, while having yellow time at lauchpad).

I tried http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59005-0-23-Release-2-15-Active-Texture-Management-Save-RAM-without-reduction-packs! and various linux tweaks and finaly reached out for the radeon.* kernel-mod parameters.

First of all I wanted to see what was enabled:

modinfo -p radeon ... well I didn't see exactly what was enabled so I found a script (see below).

EDIT(this should also work: cat /sys/module/radeon/parameters/pcie_gen2)/EDIT

The param of interest was radeon.pcie_gen2 which was set to -1 which seems to mean "auto", whatever that means.

This param is well known and not knew, I just assumed that it would be 1 by default these days.

I added radeon.pcie_gen2=1 to my bootloaders kernel-line (options root=/dev/sda4 rw radeon.dpm=1 radeon.pcie_gen2=1 in my case).

You can add this in grub by pushing 'e' in your boot menu, change the line and then 'b' to boot.

To make it persistent add it to your bootloader(grub,lilo,syslinux,gummiboot or whatever)

This made a difference. I can now have smooth shadow (32 shadow cascades, 32 pixel light source) and green time text.

Maybe this is useful for someone.

[birdspider@blackbox bin]$ cat modparams 
#!/usr/bin/env sh
module="$1"
 echo "Module: $module"; \
 if [ -d "/sys/module/$module/parameters" ]; then \
  ls /sys/module/$module/parameters/ | while read parameter; do \
   echo -n "Parameter: $parameter --> "; \
   cat /sys/module/$module/parameters/$parameter; \
  done; \
 fi; \
 echo; \

[birdspider@blackbox bin]$ ./modparams radeon
Module: radeon
<snip>
Parameter: msi --> -1
Parameter: no_wb --> 0
Parameter: pcie_gen2 --> 1       <-------------------------------------                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Parameter: r4xx_atom --> 0                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
<snip>                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Things I also tried:

LC_ALL=C R600_HYPERZ=1 R600_STREAMOUT=1 R600_SURF=1 R600_TILING=1 R600_GLSL130=1 ./KSP.x86_64

see: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Radeon#Tuning which didn't seem to do anything.

ArchLinux x64, ATI HD6850, 8 GB

[birdspider]

Umm... where do I do this? I'm slightly lost.

IFF you have an ati card and use the radeon driver unter linux.

Either in grub while the system is starting - press 'e' on the start-menu-list-entry - this brings up a simple editor - in the kernel line I think add (write) radeon.pcie_gen2=1 - press 'b' to boot that.

Or to make the change persistent so you don't have to do it every time. Change the same line somwhere in /boot/grub/<whatever>.cfg.

I can't give you the exact wording because I dont use grub. But these steps should more or less take you there.

The modinfo and modparams stuff is just to check what the current/default value of radeon.pcie_gen2 is.

Just "cat /sys/module/radeon/parameters/pcie_gen2" in an termial to show what the parameter currently is.

EDIT: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/kernel_parameters

Edited March 28, 2014 by birdspider
more info

[sal_vager]

It sounds like some of the files have the wrong permissions maybe, are you starting KSP from the terminal? That could show some info.

Also what is in your KSP.log?

[Orionblade]

It sounds like some of the files have the wrong permissions maybe, are you starting KSP from the terminal? That could show some info.

Also what is in your KSP.log?

Unfortunately, nothing is my nonexistent KSP.log that hasn't been written by the first run of the fresh install yet.

I'm getting these weird libxcursor and libGLU errors, but when I go to install the libraries that supposedly contain those missing dodads... it's already installed.

I'm actually willing to PAY someone 20 bucks to sit on screen share via skype with me for 30 minutes and figure out wtf is wrong, since I'm sure it's something Linux-related, and not really game-related... so I'll likely have issues later with something else even if I just say screw it and go to win8...

Any takers? Hopefully that's not Verboten... but my only tech guy that I normally get to help me with stuff like this is a windows guy... my local linux community is limited in utility.

I have tried double clicking all the files, i've set file permissions to what I posted earlier, using the GUI in Ubuntu, and I'm just kind of at a loss. Everything I know to do in Linux, I've done, and the missing bits are still missing. >.<

[Orionblade]

It sounds like some of the files have the wrong permissions maybe, are you starting KSP from the terminal? That could show some info.

Also what is in your KSP.log?

Ok, so progress. I installed the 32 bit dodads. Apparently I didn't have those installed. Which is weird. Since the game ran before all my updates. Maybe Ubuntu deletes stuff on update? *shrugs*

also, apparently it was just a matter of tracking down the RIGHT package, which took for-freaking-ever to install - several hundred MB. eek.

NOW... I run either of the binaries and I wind up with this:

./KSP.x86 *kaboom things happen*

Set current directory to /home/rion/Desktop/KSP_linux

Found path: /home/rion/Desktop/KSP_linux/KSP.x86

Mono path[0] = '/home/rion/Desktop/KSP_linux/KSP_Data/Managed'

Mono path[1] = '/[same as above]/Mono'

Mono config path = '[same as above]/Mono/etc'

Aborted (core dumped)

I think I remember seeing *this* error somewhere else in this thread... crap.

[sal_vager]

Well, KSP is made in Unity which ships with it's own version of Mono, so it's not likely to be Mono really at fault here.

Also, a recent Ubuntu update removed some of my 32bit libs, so it's possible.

/Mono/etc is actually there right?

[Orionblade]

Yep, mono/etc is there. it's not saying file not found or something... but when I do mono ./KSP.exe it says "File does not contain a valid CIL image."

I've done the ldd KSP.x86 thing and nothing's coming up as missing either... I'm at the end of my already-extrapolated-upon knowledge base.

[R0cketC0der]

I want to make a mobile install of ksp for linux, but when I copy the folder onto an external USB drive, I can't open the executable. When I try to open it it says:

Could not display "KSP.x86_64".

There is no application installed for "executable" files.

Do you want to search for an application to open this file?

Does anyone know how to open executable on an USB drive from linux? I'm using Ubuntu 13.10 and the USB stick has a FAT32 file system.

[sal_vager]

It works for me but my USB sticks use posix compatible file systems, a couple are ext3/4 and another is UDF, KSP for Linux won't run on fat32 or ntfs directly, but it may work if you mount the USB stick as a network drive

[R0cketC0der]

It works for me but my USB sticks use posix compatible file systems, a couple are ext3/4 and another is UDF, KSP for Linux won't run on fat32 or ntfs directly, but it may work if you mount the USB stick as a network drive

Ok, thanks for the info. I will make a new ext4 partition on that stick for ksp then.

[EvilotionCR2]

Hello! This question may have been asked before, but if I´ll install Linux on a virtual machine. Can I use 64-bit version of KSP and more than 3,5gb of RAM when I have only 8gb of RAM?

[colmo]

Hello! This question may have been asked before, but if I´ll install Linux on a virtual machine. Can I use 64-bit version of KSP and more than 3,5gb of RAM when I have only 8gb of RAM?

You could, but your performance will likely suffer horribly due to poor 3D support. Worth a try though.

[EvilotionCR2]

Okay, I use a lot of mods to record funny stuff.

[sal_vager]

You would be better off dual booting to be honest, VM's are great for lots of things but gaming isn't one of them, I think Virtualbox still only supports directX7 for example.

[B_E]

Anybody elses game crashing when loading since the newest patch? Crashes after ~50% of the loading screen (when starting via Steam, or via commandline), was working fine previously.

KSP.log ends on:

[...]

[LOG 22:14:49.405] EffectList: Created 11 effect types

[LOG 22:14:49.451] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'NASAmission/Parts/LaunchEscapeSystem/part/LaunchEscapeSystem'

[LOG 22:14:49.510] PartLoader: Compiling Part 'NASAmission/Parts/MassiveSRB/part/MassiveBooster'

(full log here)

System is Arch on 64-bit with the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

[sal_vager]

It's loading here, I suggest you eliminate any outside interference and see if a fresh install will start, you can copy over your saves afterwards

[B_E]

Hum, okay. Don't mind losing the saves actually, I already removed it via Steam, removed the config and reinstalled it, which didn't help. If it's running on your end I guess I'll just try around until I get it going.