Hi all.

I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and it
worked fine.

Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes
("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0

Works fine on the same machine under ubuntu 18.x though.

I'm assuming the mint upgrade has messed with the graphics library.
Anyone else had similar issues? Any solution/workaround please?

Thanks.

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

On 11/26/21 7:18 AM, this is what Mike Scott wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and it worked fine.
>
> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes
> ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>
> Works fine on the same machine under ubuntu 18.x though.
>
> I'm assuming the mint upgrade has messed with the graphics library. Anyone else had similar issues? Any solution/workaround please?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
You might go into synaptic and re-install it again. Might be a dependency issue?

--
Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2 64bit, Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop
Quad Core i7-8550U, 16G Memory, 512G SSD, 750G & 1TB HDDs

On 26/11/2021 12:51, Big Al wrote:
> On 11/26/21 7:18 AM, this is what Mike Scott wrote:
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and
>> it worked fine.
>>
>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
>> garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes
>> ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>>
>> Works fine on the same machine under ubuntu 18.x though.
>>
>> I'm assuming the mint upgrade has messed with the graphics library.
>> Anyone else had similar issues? Any solution/workaround please?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
> You might go into synaptic and re-install it again.  Might be a
> dependency issue?
>
Thanks.
It's distributed as a .deb file. Installs fine. (I have tried
re-installing, without improvement)

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

Mike Scott wrote:
> On 26/11/2021 12:51, Big Al wrote:
>> On 11/26/21 7:18 AM, this is what Mike Scott wrote:
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and
>>> it worked fine.
>>>
>>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
>>> garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes
>>> ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>>>
>>> Works fine on the same machine under ubuntu 18.x though.
>>>
>>> I'm assuming the mint upgrade has messed with the graphics library.
>>> Anyone else had similar issues? Any solution/workaround please?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>> You might go into synaptic and re-install it again.  Might be a
>> dependency issue?
>>
> Thanks.
> It's distributed as a .deb file. Installs fine. (I have tried
> re-installing, without improvement)
>
>
The flatpak can be installed via Software Manager (2.8 GB)

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.flashforge.FlashPrint

On 11/27/2021 3:31 AM, Mike Scott wrote:
> On 26/11/2021 12:51, Big Al wrote:
>> On 11/26/21 7:18 AM, this is what Mike Scott wrote:
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and it worked fine.
>>>
>>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>>>
>>> Works fine on the same machine under ubuntu 18.x though.
>>>
>>> I'm assuming the mint upgrade has messed with the graphics library. Anyone else had similar issues? Any solution/workaround please?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>>
>> You might go into synaptic and re-install it again.  Might be a dependency issue?
>>
> Thanks.
> It's distributed as a .deb file. Installs fine. (I have tried re-installing, without improvement)

Why not do an inxi -G and get some details ?

When you have lemons, there is a tendency to make lemonade,
and in this case, OpenGL is an all-too-inviting subsystem for
a 3D editing application.

The hanging for seconds followed by a crash, I've had that
sort of thing happen before, and it was an OpenGL implementation
that lacked the ability to determine "graphics RAM remaining".

Since you're on a laptop, there aren't a lot of good options.
You can't stuff in a competitors card, and run a second test
case against their driver set.

You can visit the BIOS and check out the static and dynamic
RAM settings for the GPU, and adjust as you think will help.
But if the software simply cannot tell how big the graphics
memory is in any case, it generally doesn't help.

On an NVidia GPU, they provide "nvidia-smi" to read out
graphics subsystem usage. It's possible AMD has one of those,
but I don't know what it's called. Intel on the other hand, it
would be expecting a lot for them to crank out an "nvidia-smi"
of their own. But, such applications exist, because OpenGL
*needs* some of the measurement capability. If you are offered
an nvidia-smi application, it means the driver is likely well=designed
to indicate out-of-graphics-RAM conditions.

Paul

On 27/11/2021 09:08, Paul wrote:
> On 11/27/2021 3:31 AM, Mike Scott wrote:
>> On 26/11/2021 12:51, Big Al wrote:
>>> On 11/26/21 7:18 AM, this is what Mike Scott wrote:
>>>> Hi all.
>>>>
>>>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20,
>>>> and it worked fine.
>>>>
>>>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
>>>> garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and
>>>> crashes ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>>>>
>>>> Works fine on the same machine under ubuntu 18.x though.
>>>>
>>>> I'm assuming the mint upgrade has messed with the graphics library.
>>>> Anyone else had similar issues? Any solution/workaround please?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> You might go into synaptic and re-install it again.  Might be a
>>> dependency issue?
>>>
>> Thanks.
>> It's distributed as a .deb file. Installs fine. (I have tried
>> re-installing, without improvement)
>
> Why not do an   inxi -G   and get some details ?

Because I didn't think of it:
mike@uhura:~$ inxi -G
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel driver: i915 v: kernel
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: intel
resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 610 (WHL GT1) v: 4.6 Mesa
21.0.3

>
> When you have lemons, there is a tendency to make lemonade,
> and in this case, OpenGL is an all-too-inviting subsystem for
> a 3D editing application.
>
> The hanging for seconds followed by a crash, I've had that
> sort of thing happen before, and it was an OpenGL implementation
> that lacked the ability to determine "graphics RAM remaining".
>
> Since you're on a laptop, there aren't a lot of good options.
> You can't stuff in a competitors card, and run a second test
> case against their driver set.

Used to run on mint 10; still runs on the copy of ubuntu (18.x ? that
came with the lappy) still installed. It's my assumption the recent
upgrade has messed things up.

A bit of random clicking around can produce a fleeting correct image,
but attempting to actually use it usually crashes in short order. The
duff image shows the menu bar, but the main window is broken up in
various ways - short image segments, bars on screen, etc.

>
> You can visit the BIOS and check out the static and dynamic
> RAM settings for the GPU, and adjust as you think will help.

That's a thought. I'll check the settings.

> But if the software simply cannot tell how big the graphics
> memory is in any case, it generally doesn't help.
>
> On an NVidia GPU, they provide "nvidia-smi" to read out
> graphics subsystem usage. It's possible AMD has one of those,

This one's an i915) chipset.

> but I don't know what it's called. Intel on the other hand, it
> would be expecting a lot for them to crank out an "nvidia-smi"
> of their own. But, such applications exist, because OpenGL
> *needs* some of the measurement capability. If you are offered
> an nvidia-smi application, it means the driver is likely well=designed
> to indicate out-of-graphics-RAM conditions.

Looks like I'll have to get another machine to try things out on. I
daren't risk putting the lappy out of commission. I wonder if flashforge
have a responsive support line.

>
>    Paul

Thanks for the comments.

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

On 27/11/2021 10:29, Mike Scott wrote:
> On 27/11/2021 09:08, Paul wrote:
.....
>
> That's a thought. I'll check the settings.
>

FWIW the uefi config stuff says whiskeylake graphics, fixed at 64Mb.

There don't seem to be any tweakable options.

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

On 11/27/2021 5:39 AM, Mike Scott wrote:
> On 27/11/2021 10:29, Mike Scott wrote:
>> On 27/11/2021 09:08, Paul wrote:
> ....
>>
>> That's a thought. I'll check the settings.
>>
>
> FWIW the uefi config stuff says whiskeylake graphics, fixed at 64Mb.
>
> There don't seem to be any tweakable options.
>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Lake_%28microprocessor%29

UHD 620

The general theme seems to be, that the static allocation is
no longer all that important, and the dynamic loading of system
memory takes care of it.

64MB might be sufficient for a frame buffer at the BIOS level.
Once the OS is running, they can adjust that in the OS (the
dynamic part).

At one time, this was all neat and tidy, because the hardware
did actually have an upper limit. It was around 1536MB. And
this value might have shown in the BIOS.

But the hardware today, I might see "32GB" showing on a
video card (that has 8GB of chips onboard). This suggests the
"unified memory space" idea is pretty far advanced.

But we still need to see the current allocation, or be
able to monitor it, just to see if whatever driver is
currently running, doesn't know what it is doing.

*******

nvidia-smi
radeontop
intel_gpu_top

For example, running radeontop on mine (AMD), reads

4060M VRAM
4087M GTT

And only a tiny portion is used at the moment. 286MB
of the top one, 65MB of the bottom one.

That's a laptop-like GPU. A Vega7.

The "memory clock" mentioned in the interface, is the main
memory clock. 1600MHz for DDR4-3200 RAM.

The "shader clock" is turned down, because I'm not doing
3D stuff like you. My clock is set at 21% of max, to reduce
power consumption.

I would give the Intel_gpu_top a try and as long as you're
using the Intel driver, it should register.

Paul

On 27/11/2021 11:55, Paul wrote:
> On 11/27/2021 5:39 AM, Mike Scott wrote:
>> On 27/11/2021 10:29, Mike Scott wrote:
>>> On 27/11/2021 09:08, Paul wrote:
>> ....
>>>
>>> That's a thought. I'll check the settings.
>>>
>>
>> FWIW the uefi config stuff says whiskeylake graphics, fixed at 64Mb.
>>
>> There don't seem to be any tweakable options.
>>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiskey_Lake_%28microprocessor%29
>
>    UHD 620
>
> The general theme seems to be, that the static allocation is
> no longer all that important, and the dynamic loading of system
> memory takes care of it.
.....

Thanks for the response.

I contacted flashforge support - who simply said they only support
ubuntu linux (not that the website mentions this). Which means mint
should work too, I'd have thought. Not a helpful response, although they
did mention someone else had reported the same issue.

I've now installed both ubuntu (latest) and mint 20.2 on a couple of VMs
on my desktop box (old i5/nvidia) and flashprint works fine on both. It
also works in a 20.2 VM on the laptop in question -- so what's going on
in the laptop's installed OS is not clear: it was installed as mint 20
(flashprint fine), and upgraded to 20.2 (flashprint fails).

Maybe a forced reinstall of all packages is in order, but that'll have
to wait, as I can't risk breaking things atm. I've run debsums -c, but
there seems nothing critical that's been changed (although quite a few
..png and .desktop files were flagged up).

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

On 26/11/2021 12:18, Mike Scott wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and it
> worked fine.
>
> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
> garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes
> ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0

I've now found that video players like vlc, celluloid, mpv don't work
either. On trying to play any video, they simply slurp all all available
memory and swap.

A VM running the live CD will play perfectly well though, so it's not
mint per se. Something's presumably been corrupted during the upgrade
from 20 to 20.2. I've tried 'debsums -c' but it just reports
innocuous-looking files (.png, .desktop mainly).

Maybe time for a complete re-install. Anything worth trying before that?

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England

Mike Scott wrote:
> On 26/11/2021 12:18, Mike Scott wrote:
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and
>> it worked fine.
>>
>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
>> garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes
>> ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>
> I've now found that video players like vlc, celluloid, mpv don't work
> either. On trying to play any video, they simply slurp all all available
> memory and swap.
>
> A VM running the live CD will play perfectly well though, so it's not
> mint per se. Something's presumably been corrupted during the upgrade
> from 20 to 20.2. I've tried 'debsums -c' but it just reports
> innocuous-looking files (.png, .desktop mainly).
>
> Maybe time for a complete re-install. Anything worth trying before that?
>
I would launch vlc and others in a terminal to see messages.

On 12/1/2021 5:31 AM, Andrei Z. wrote:
> Mike Scott wrote:
>> On 26/11/2021 12:18, Mike Scott wrote:
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20, and it worked fine.
>>>
>>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and crashes ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>>
>> I've now found that video players like vlc, celluloid, mpv don't work either. On trying to play any video, they simply slurp all all available memory and swap.
>>
>> A VM running the live CD will play perfectly well though, so it's not mint per se. Something's presumably been corrupted during the upgrade from 20 to 20.2. I've tried 'debsums -c' but it just reports innocuous-looking files (.png, .desktop mainly).
>>
>> Maybe time for a complete re-install. Anything worth trying before that?
>>
> I would launch vlc and others in a terminal to see messages.
>

The two problems aren't exactly the same.

The FlashPrint might be using OpenGL.

VLC at least, would want to use QuickSync video acceleration,
which on Linux might have "VA" in the name. I don['t know if
VLC uses OpenGL on purpose. The desktop could use elements
of Compiz (composting).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration

(VA-API)... hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding, developed by Intel.

Maybe we could do two things at once. In one Terminal:

/usr/bin/vlc ~/some.mp4

And in a second terminal:

intel_gpu_top

Then see if there is any pattern to the GPU usage as
the thing flails and uses up all the memory.

There is also a bit more Inxi, like

inxi -Fxxxrz

I don't think this is one of Intels goofy GPUs. Intel uses
mostly their own GPUs. On one CPU (an Atom), they used a
"foreign" GPU, something that a smartphone might have used.
That was a bit of a disaster for users who bought that hardware.
Another weird mix, is I think one Intel CPU, as an experiment, used
an AMD Vega GPU. There was some whining there about drivers.

Another thing. Does Intel need FW ? Is there a /lib/fw
component to this ? You would be dead in the water, if it
needed that and it wasn't there.

Also, the "success" using a Live Stick and "fail" using the
install to disk, should be telling us something. But isn't the Intel
in those cases, all coming from the kernel driver ? Like, if
I was doing tests like that here, Nouveau would run the Live Stick
case, and NVidia would run my install (once I "fixed" it).

It's possible it is a kernel version issue. Maybe at boot, there
is more than one kernel to choose from ?

Paul

On 01/12/2021 11:05, Paul wrote:
> On 12/1/2021 5:31 AM, Andrei Z. wrote:
>> Mike Scott wrote:
>>> On 26/11/2021 12:18, Mike Scott wrote:
>>>> Hi all.
>>>>
>>>> I'd installed Flashprint5 on my laptop (Dell/i915) under mint 20,
>>>> and it worked fine.
>>>>
>>>> Since upgrading to mint 20.2, the display window content has been
>>>> garbled (mostly), the program hangs for seconds at a time and
>>>> crashes ("Aborted"). This is for Flashprint 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.2.0
>>>
>>> I've now found that video players like vlc, celluloid, mpv don't work
>>> either. On trying to play any video, they simply slurp all all
>>> available memory and swap.
>>>
>>> A VM running the live CD will play perfectly well though, so it's not
>>> mint per se. Something's presumably been corrupted during the upgrade
>>> from 20 to 20.2. I've tried 'debsums -c' but it just reports
>>> innocuous-looking files (.png, .desktop mainly).
>>>
>>> Maybe time for a complete re-install. Anything worth trying before that?
>>>
>> I would launch vlc and others in a terminal to see messages.
>>
>
> The two problems aren't exactly the same.
>
> The FlashPrint might be using OpenGL.
>
> VLC at least, would want to use QuickSync video acceleration,
> which on Linux might have "VA" in the name. I don['t know if
> VLC uses OpenGL on purpose. The desktop could use elements
> of Compiz (composting).
>
> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration
>
>    (VA-API)... hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding,
> developed by Intel.
>
> Maybe we could do two things at once. In one Terminal:
>
>    /usr/bin/vlc ~/some.mp4
>
> And in a second terminal:
>
>    intel_gpu_top

(For reference for anyone else, this is in the package intel-gpu-tools)

.....
> Also, the "success" using a Live Stick and "fail" using the
> install to disk, should be telling us something. But isn't the Intel
> in those cases, all coming from the kernel driver ? Like, if
> I was doing tests like that here, Nouveau would run the Live Stick
> case, and NVidia would run my install (once I "fixed" it).
>
> It's possible it is a kernel version issue. Maybe at boot, there
> is more than one kernel to choose from ?
>
>    Paul
>

Thanks for taking the time to reply at length.

After posting, and given that all packages seemed to be OK, I decided to
take drastic action and reinstall from DVD. The fresh system does indeed
work correctly, as did the mint20 system before upgrading.

Ergo, something must have gone horrendously wrong during the upgrade. I
can't imagine what, and can't see a ready way I could have checked the
old system. I've still got the old failing system; maybe a 'diff -r' and
a lot of reading might shed light. But TBH now it's working, it's
probably not worth the effort for a post mortem.

My thanks to all who've offered advice.

--
Mike Scott
Harlow, England