Welcome to Project Looking Glass!
This document is intended to get you up and running quickly with the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release.
To get started you'll first need to set up your environment. Once you've verified that your environment is set up correctly you can download and install Project Looking Glass.
1. Platform Requirements Hardware
and software requirements
2. Setting up your
project Looking Glass environment Downloading and
installing the required components
3. Installing the
Project Looking Glass Developer's Release
4. Running Project Looking
Glass How to start a Project Looking Glass desktop session
5. Troubleshooting
6. Staying connected with
Project Looking Glass How to stay in touch!
7. Some final words
Before you start setting up your Project Looking Glass development environment, first check to make sure your system meets the following minimal requirements:
| Component | Requirement |
| Operating System |
Linux on x86: Most modern linux distributions should work, although there have been problems experienced when running it on a portage-based java-install. We suggest following this guide for installing all components listed manually instead of using portage.
Solaris on amd64: Looking Glass is now supported on Solaris x86 S10_b74 (or later). |
| CPU | 2 GHz or faster recommended |
| RAM | 512MB | <
| Graphics Card* |
Linux x86: A 3D accelerated graphics card with driver support for OpenGL, version 1.2 or greater. For Nvidia devices you must use at least the following driver version: 1.0-6629. Refer to here for important information on how to configure Nvidia cards for LG3D. NOTE: It is especially important to consult these instructions if you have recently upgraded your driver to 1.0-6629, because LG3D requires additional configuration steps for 1.0-6629. Solaris x86: At the time of this writing, the only type of graphics cards supported on Solaris x86 are certain Nvidia cards (see below). The Nvidia driver for Solaris x86 (1.0-7664) can be downloaded from here. Refer to here for more information. Currently only the following Nvidia graphics devices are supported by the Solaris x86 driver.
Quadro FX 3000 Quadro FX 1100 Quadro FX 500 NVS 280 If you are successful in getting Project Looking Glass to run on other cards, or want to report problems with specific cards, please let us know using the discussion forum |
| Disk Space | 350MB |
Before you can run Project Looking Glass, you need to install a number of Java components. The simplest way to do this is to download all of the components and then install them in the order listed below.
Note: The installation instructions assume that you download all of the components into /tmp.
After downloading all of the components, install them by following the instructions below.
If you haven't previously registered at java.net then you'll need to create an account:
The Project Looking Glass Developer's Release requires a color depth of at least 24 bits. Many systems are configured by default with 16 bit color depths and the Project Looking Glass Developer's Release will not run correctly at this depth. You can identify the current display depth by running the following command:
% xdpyinfo | grep "depth of root"
depth of root window: 24 planes
If you see a value lower than 24, you must change the color depth. The process for changing the color depth varies by platform. Refer to the configuration instructions for your platform below:
Many Linux platforms use the XF86Config file to configure the display properties. To change the color depth on these systems:
Solaris x86 uses the xorg.conf file to configure the display properties for the Xorg server which is used by Project Looking Glass. To change the color depth on Solaris x86:
In this mode, a Project Looking Glass session runs in a window in your desktop. This is the simplest way to run Project Looking Glass but this mode only allows you to run Project Looking Glass 3D applications, such as the CD viewer. X11 applications, such as xterm will appear outside the LG screen; they will appear in the X session from which you launched the Project Looking Glass session.
If you have successfully installed Project Looking Glass you should see the familiar Project Looking Glass desktop in a window on your desktop:
Clicking the CD icon on the taskbar will open the CD viewer, a 3D demo application. Mouse over the stack of CDs and click on the CD images to see the application in action. For addtional operational information, click the icon to the left of the CD Viewer on the taskbar. This will open a panel that summarizes the user interface operations supported by the default Scene Manager. Note that the left-most icon, a computer, launches an xterm window. This item demonstrates X11 application integration and is only supported in sessionmode. See the next section for instructions on how to configure session mode.
This mode allows you to run Project Looking Glass full-screen and launch any application, including native X11 applications. You must first shutdown your X session before starting Project Looking Glass.
JDS/SuSE 8.1 uses the X Display Manager (xdm) to manage user sessions. To run Project Looking Glass you must first shut down xdm. Since this process is respawned automatically you must disable this service using the chkconfig command:
Note: To re-activate the X Display manager, enter the following command as root, and then reboot your system:
# /sbin/chkconfig -a xdm
RedHat uses the GNOME Display Manager (gdm) to manage user sessions. It's not necessary to disable gdm, you can simply switch to a lower run level where gdm is not active:
Note: To restart the GNOME Display Manager, enter the following command as root from the console:
# /sbin/init 5
To run Project Looking Glass full screen on the 64-bit version of Fedora Core 3 requires a few unique changes. Note that you will need access to a 32-bit Linux system or the 32-bit X11 modules for Linux to complete this procedure.
In order to run Project Looking Glass in session mode on Solaris x86, you
must first shut down CDE and disable its subsequent boot-time start up.
To do this, become root and type:
# /usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d
then reboot your computer.
Once you have brought down your existing X session, to start Project Looking Glass in session mode do the following:
Explore the Project Looking Glass desktop and start dreaming of new ways to enhance the desktop user experience with 3D! When you're ready to do development, skip over to the Project Looking Glass Developer's Guide for information about developing with Project Looking Glass.
no core pointer
This happens on RedHat Fedora Core 2, and may happen on other configurations as well. One known workaround (from sgiunchi) is to do the following (as root user):
# ln -s /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
The correct long term fix is to upgrade the X11 release which is included in lg3d-core. It is currently an Xorg 6.7 pre-release and it needs to be upgraded to the latest Xorg stable release.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/java/jdk1.5.0/jre/lib/i386/libj3dcore-ogl.so:
/usr/java/jdk1.5.0/jre/lib/i386/libj3dcore-ogl.so: symbol glMultiDrawArraysEXT, version LIBGL not defined in file libGL.so.1 with link time referenceThis error occurs with ATI device drivers that are missing the glMultiDrawArraysEXT extension. The solution to this problem is to replace the Radeon device drivers with drivers from the Direct Rendering Open Source (DRI) project. For instructions on installing direct rendering drivers refer to DRI driver installation for ATI Radeon.
Note that upgrading libGL.so to the latest Mesa libraries does not solve this problem.
pkill: 27863 - Operation not permitted
java.rmi.server.ExportException: Port already in use: 1099; nested exception is:
java.net.BindException: Address already in use...
This message indicates that an rmiregistry process is already running and lg3d-dev was unable to start a new instance. Typically this occurs when the rmiregistry process was started by root and lg3d-dev is run as a non-root user. The solution to this problem is to stop the root instance of rmiregistry. Become root and stop the process:
% su root
Password: enter root password
# pkill rmiregistry
# exit
Now re-run the lg3d-dev command as a non-root user to start Project Looking Glass.
Fatal Server error: Cannot establish any listening sockets
The following error message is displayed when you start Project Looking Glass using lg3d-session:
_XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ...SocketCreateListener() failed
_XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: server already running
Fatal server error:
Cannot establish any listening sockets - Make sure an X server
isn't already runningFirst, make sure that you do not have an X11 session running on the display on which you're starting lg3d-session. Then check to see if you have /tmp/.X11-unix/X0 left behind from a previous session. To fix this problem, delete this file and restart lg3d-session.
Screen updates are very slow
This usually means that graphics acceleration is not correctly configured. Here are some things to check first:
- Run the glxinfo command from within an X11 session and check that the direct rendering property is set to Yes. Also look for references to OpenGL to ensure that your graphics accelerator device driver supports OpenGL.
- For NVIDIA cards, run xdpyinfo and verify that you see GLX or NVIDIA-GLX.
If you don't see these properties then you probably don't have the appropriate device driver installed or 3D enabled. Refer to your vendor's web site for information on installing and configuring a device driver with 3D/OpenGL support.
- Check the X server log file at /var/log/XFree86.0.log for error messages and to check which drivers are being loaded.
libGL error: failed to open DRM: operation not permitted
(This error may be encountered when running lg3d-dev).
If Project Looking Glass runs very slowly, even though 3D acceleration is enabled, check to see if the following message appears in the console:
libGL error: failed to open DRM: Operation not permitted
libGL error: reverting to (slow) indirect renderingThis means that your user account doesn't have permission to use the DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure). In some cases root is the only user with access to Direct Rendering. This problem seems to only affect RedHat users, and not JDS/SuSE users. If you have this problem, you should change the DRI permissions in your XFree86Config or XF86Config file to:
Section "DRI"
Group "video"
Mode 0666
EndSection
You will also need to change the permissions of the <dri> profile in /etc/security/console.perms from 0600 to 0666:
<xconsole> 0600 <dri> 0666 rootand if you're using an NVIDIA card, change the permissions on /dev/nvidia* to 0666:
# chmod a+rw /dev/nvidia*An unexpected exception has been detected in native code outside the VM
Project Looking Glass exits with the following exception, even though you've verified that you have 3D acceleration enabled:
An unexpected exception has been detected in native code outside the VM.
Unexpected Signal : 11 occurred at PC=0x0
Function=[Unknown.]
Library=(N/A)
Check to see if the following entries appear in the exception message:
<addr-range> r-xp 00000000 03:05 61763 /usr/lib/GL/libGL.so.1.3.mesasoft
<addr-range> rw-p 001b4000 03:05 61763 /usr/lib/GL/libGL.so.1.3.mesasoftIf so, you have the MESA software OpenGL libraries installed. Use the package tool for your distribution (e.g., rpm) to remove these libraries, and then go into /usr/lib as root and check that the following symbolic links exist and point to the correct OpenGL libraries. You should have links that look something like this (where x and y are numbers):
libGLcore.so.1 -> libGLcore.so.1.x
libGL.so -> libGL.so.x
libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.x.y.zIf these links are not correct, become root and create them. For example, if you have a libGLU.so.1 file but no libGLU.so link, then create the link:
# ln -s /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 /usr/lib/libGLU.soRepeat this for each of the links that are missing.
Failed to load the NVIDIA driver
There are several possible reasons for the driver failing to initialize correctly:
- The NVIDIA driver is compiled for linux.*bigmem. If your Linux system has two images, bigmem and linux*up, use the former one. Otherwise the driver will fail to load.
- The NVIDIA driver needs to find the IRQ that is assigned to the video card. This should be set by the BIOS before the OS boots, but it can be switched off in some BIOS. Try switching it back on again to see if it helps.
- Refer to the NVIDIA driver installation instructions and release notes for further details.
See also:
Project Looking Glass Developer's Release Notes
Additional information on current problems and issues can be found under lg3d-core Project Tools > Issue tracker. You can search for issues and defects or find a specific issue.
The Project Looking Glass project is evolving continually. The best way to keep up to date with Project Looking Glass developments is by subscribing to the Project Looking Glass mailing lists. Click on Mailing lists in the Project tools section of the side bar on https://lg3d.dev.java.net/. There are several mailing lists to choose from depending on your level of interest.
Thanks for getting involved with the Project Looking Glass project! We're really looking forward to your contributions in this exciting new desktop experience!
The Project Looking Glass Development Team
See also:
Project Looking Glass Developer's
Release Notes
Project Looking Glass Developer's
Guide
Installing and Configuring Device
Drivers
for 3D Desktop Project Looking Glass