psx 1.11 crashes in linux when loading isos

[kirbyboy]

Hi, i just downloaded psx 1.11 and tried in linux(i used it previously in windows), and when i load a second iso, it crashes.

I use Feisty Fawn, Nvidia Card FX5500 with driver installed(Ubuntu installed it automatically). I installed the GdkGLExt with sipnactic too.

I've searched in forum, but i didn't find nothing like that.

P.D.: My english is not very good. ;D

[patrickp]

If you mean that you play a game, exit the emulator and then it crashes when you try to boot it again, I had exactly the same problem, kirbyboy. I have an ATI card and had loaded the fglrx driver through synaptic. When I found that a much slower machine without the ATI fglrx driver (card too old) was running pSX better and not crashing, I uninstalled the fglrx driver and went back to the generic driver - problem solved! Then I discovered a howto to install the ATI driver manually, and that was how it should have been all along.

If the problem is that you try loading a second image without exiting the emulator and it crashes (as, for instance, when you need to change to another CD/image in a game), you should do Eject CD before loading the second CD/image.

[kirbyboy]

Hi, i'll write the error messages than are in the terminal:
When i start the emulator: (pSX:6567): GdkGLExt-WARNING **: Cannot open X\xa4T\u0008L.so
but this is the only error message.

I tried to unistall the driver, but if i use the emulator, the emulator doesn't work and the X restart.

I tried to Eject CD before loading another image, but it doesn't work, it crashes like before.

When i say the emulator crashes(remenber my english is not good), what it does is that the window where you choose an iso freezes and i have to kill it with xkill command, sometimes i can load a second iso, but at the third one it freezes.

[patrickp]

What driver did you try to uninstall, kirbyboy? libgtkglext1 (_not_ GdkGLExt - I don't think there's any such thing, and it's certainly not what you need for pSX)? pSX won't work without libgtkglext1, so you'd better reinstall that...

I'm finding similar behaviour, but my problem is simply that the emulator locks up and I have to kill it (no need to use the xkill command, click the close button; wait a few seconds and Ubuntu will ask you if want to force a quit). I don't have to restart X and I can restart the emulator immediately.

For changing from game to game, this isn't a problem, you can just close the emulator and restart, but for changing discs in a multi-CD game, this could be a bit awkward... some games will give you the opportunity to save just before the disc change; in these cases, you can usually restart the emulator with the next disc loaded, and your save will take you on. I'm wondering if you could use a save state similarly, but I can't think of any saves I have that are near a disc change so I could check...

[kirbyboy]

The driver i uninstall is the nvidia driver of the restricted manager in Feisty Fawn, without it, the emulator doesn't work. The X restarts only if the nvidia driver is uninstalled.

I could do that, everytime a load a new iso, close and reopen the emulator(it locks up like to you, but i use xkill because is faster for me), but if it happens to more people, wouldn't it be a bug?

Thanks for your help, i'll reopen the emulator for now, i hope this is a bug that is solved now, at least i know i'm not the only one it happens.

[patrickp]

Well, the bug isn't fixed yet, kirbyboy, but now you've pointed it out, maybe it will be. After all, this is the first Linux release of pSX, and it's bound to have problems.

Did you reboot (not just restart X) after uninstalling the Nvidia driver? A reboot is necessary with the ATI driver, and I would suspect the same is needed for the Nvidia one.

As I mentioned before, I had a similar problem with pSX before the full release: I had installed the fglrx (proprietary ATI) driver in Synaptic, and I was getting a problem with pSX in that it would always run the first time after starting X, but would crash if I tried to restart it; I had to restart X every time. Then I came across some suggestions that installing the fglrx driver through synaptic was not a good idea. First, I uninstalled the fglrx driver and found that, not only did pSX not crash on a second start, but pSX was actually running better with the default driver than it had with the fglrx one. Then I discovered how to install the proprietary driver manually, and things got _much_ better.

So, first - if you didn't reboot after uninstalling the Nvidia driver, that may be why pSX wouldn't run and, second, it may be better (just a guess, though) to install the Nvidia driver manually if you want to use it.

[kirbyboy]

I reboot the PC after install/uninstall the driver of nvidia, the emulator only doesn't work when the driver is not installed, the emulator runs but doesn't work correctly.

The driver is installed with the restricted manager(i heard that is the same than installing manually). I don't know enough of linux to do it myself, but i did it with ENVY that is a script that installs it automatically like if you did it manually.

When the driver is installed (with restricted manager or with ENVY), the emulator works correctly, but i'll have to restart it for now when i change isos.