Bug 254880 – x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel: Failed to initialize GEM. Falling back to classic.

• Status: RESOLVED UPSTREAM
• Product: Gentoo Linux

[Description Sven 2009-01-13 19:50:01 UTC]

Runnign glxgears yields the following error:
Failed to initialize GEM.  Falling back to classic.

3D works, as long as it doesn't say
  Option Legacy3D "off"
in my xorg.conf.


I'm running the following versions of relevant components:
- kernel 2.6.28, dmesg says:
[drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 on minor 0
- x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.5.99.2
- x11-proto/dri2proto-1.99.3
- media-libs/mesa-7.3_rc1
- x11-base/xorg-server-1.5.3


What seems to be wrong? I was told, GEM is supposed to work.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

[Comment 1 Sven 2009-01-25 22:30:42 UTC]

did an upstream bugreport:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19739

[Comment 2 Rémi Cardona (RETIRED) 2009-01-26 07:31:44 UTC]

Thanks, let's see what upstream thinks.

[Comment 3 Mark Knecht 2009-04-21 22:37:27 UTC]

Any chance we could push this a little more from our end? Reading Sven's bug report upstream I didn't see that it was resolved, or didn't understand the resolution.

I've got a machine that fails to run any xv-based video (MythTV, xine, mplayer, etc.) It's Intel i915-based also. This machine has worked for years, never had a problem, until this recent xorg-server upgrade when it was broken.

I am not using PAE according to my kernel config. I don't see the out of tree messages that Sven saw. I see segfault messages from the Intel driver any time I attempt to do xv video, along with a message about being unable to pin an xv buffer.

Is this bug really resolved?

[Comment 4 Sven 2009-04-22 05:22:55 UTC]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Any chance we could push this a little more from our end? Reading Sven's bug
> report upstream I didn't see that it was resolved, or didn't understand the
> resolution.

I had to disable PAE. GEM doesn't work with PAE.

[Comment 5 Mark Knecht 2009-04-22 13:08:49 UTC]

OK. Glad you got yours working. 

My problem is the same error message about GEM not being enabled but I'm not using PAE. 

[Comment 6 muhsin 2009-04-25 17:48:59 UTC]

Same problem here...actually my kernel was working and I didnt change anything on it...i just emerged gnome-light and X startx now fails :)

[Comment 7 muhsin 2009-04-25 22:09:05 UTC]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Same problem here...actually my kernel was working and I didnt change anything
> on it...i just emerged gnome-light and X startx now fails :)
> 

my bad...i fogot to :

#echo "exec gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc

-:)