Printer, nVidia Graphics and VMware

Recently I had to rebuild my System. New Hard Disc… the old one died. Anyway, after installing a number of things, including openSuSE 12.1, I tried to setup my Printer… and was apparently successful. However, now when I startup VMware I get the following message:

Direct rendering is not available.

With other verbiage stating that the graphics performance may be low and to follow the vendors (both hardware and software) procedures for updating. Well, I just did.

Now then, what makes this most puzzling is… I was messing with the Printer NOT the Graphics. VMware will fire up and work ok -but- I get this message – which I probably should present to the VMware guys now that I think of it -but- I always like to check with my friends here first.

IF anyone has had a similar instance like this -and- has a fix please let me know what it was.

Thanks,
Chuck

Well, I didn’t get any answers at VMware… anyone got any ideas???

Well, I guess this is a conversation with myself, -but- I see others have at least viewed it. So, in the spirit of helpfulness I will tell you what I found.

After searching and looking everywhere and picking up little tid bits here and there, we tried this little trick. Using the command:

      glxinfo | grep direct

in a ‘root’ window would produce:

direct rendering: Yes
GL_EXT_Cg_shader, GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test, GL_EXT_direct_state_access,

However, using that same command sequence as a ‘normal’ user would produce:

direct rendering: No

Then after much head scratching, and looking on the net, we made our ‘user’ a member of the ‘video’ group. Logged out and back in and then we could get the same results as ‘user’ or ‘root’. ALSO -and- most important we no longer get the message about: “Direct rendering unavailable” when we fire up our VMware.

Once again, we did NOT have this problem UNTIL we started messing with stuff to get our printer working. The thing that seemed to “break” it was the compile and install of a theoretically newer HPLIP setup. Which we found in the long run that it was probably not needed anyway. But it was all a learning experience. Whether the latest “fixes” are correct or not — it works.

Thanks and have a good day,
Chuck