Running NRP in a no-GPU Virtual Machine

[Christopher23]

Hi all,

I have successfully built/installed the NRP code following the official instructions (https://bitbucket.org/hbpneurorobotics/neurorobotics-platform/src/master/) in an Ubuntu 16.04 virtual machine. That VM runs on a server without GPUs and I have a problem with the execution of the experiments: if I select the CPU rendering mode by executing the “rendering_mode cpu” command, I am able to launch an experiment but the page that opens in the web browser after pressing the “launch” button stops at the “rendering environment” step. On the other side, if I try to use the GPU rendering mode, I got the following OpenGL related errors that I haven’t been able to fix yet:

libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
Major opcode of failed request: 150 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 3 (X_GLXCreateContext)
Value in failed request: 0x0
Serial number of failed request: 23
Current serial number in output stream: 24

I’m connecting to the server hosting the VM from a Mac laptop through ssh -X -Y. Do you have anything to suggest to solve the above issues? Thank you very much in advance for your attention.

Cheers
Christopher

[camilo]

Hi Christopher,

are you using VMWare?
there are issues with virtual box.

check this out.

NRP on VirtualBox [Solved -> use VMware]

I was trying to set up the NRP on a VirtualBox guest running Ubuntu 16.04 on an OSX host. I followed all the steps but gzserver keeps crashing (Segmentation fault). Examining the core file points towards that some openGL error. Googling around for “Gazebo” and “VirtualBox” brings up quite a few posts saying that Gazebo cannot possibly run in a VirtualBox Ubuntu guest due to limitations of the graphics driver provided. I have raised a related issue on bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/hbpneurorobo…

[Christopher23]

Hi Camilo,

no, it’s an OpenStack system (I should have specified that in my question, my apologies). But I will have a look to the link you sent, maybe the problem is the same. Thank you very much!

Cheers
Christopher

[Christopher23]

Problem solved: I can run the NRP experiment by using CPU rendering and the Chrome browser.

I was using Firefox and the very long initial rendering phase I was experiencing was actually an error that was only visible by opening the debug console of the browser and which seems to be related to the non supported GPU. Another user reported the same error in the HBP forum:

Environment stucks in rendering and doesn't open

When I tried to run some of the environments, they doesn’t load and get stuck in the rendering as shown this picture and this error shows up in the console. I am using Chrome Version 73.0.3683.86 and ubuntu 16.04 LTS [env-error]

The problem is the same even if he is using Chrome while I was using Firefox. I tried to apply the suggested fix but nothing changed. I also tried to fix the issue from within Firefox options (https://www.sitepoint.com/firefox-enable-webgl-blacklisted-graphics-card/) but again nothing changed. Then I tried to switch to Chrome and everything worked: I still have some warnings from the browser (I can see them in the terminal used to launch the browser itself) but I can now run the NRP experiments.