compiz/emerald randomly stopped working/starting up

[Uber Nooblett]

root@JJs-Beast:/home/jj# compiz
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 05:00.0 0300: 10de:0193 (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (2560x1024) to maximum 3D texture size (8192): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Starting emerald
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Another window manager is already running on screen: 0
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0
exec: 378: /usr/bin/metacity: not found

That's what I get when I try to start it now
Quick fix please?

JJ x

[dibl]

Re: compiz/emerald randomly stopped working/starting up

Yep, compiz can be a bit of a puzzle at times. I go at in stages:

1. Confirm I've got my driver installed and xorg.conf configured correctly, by running

glxgears

2. If glxgears works right, then the next thing is to test the Emerald window decorator. Open a Konsole window and enter

emerald --replace

That should change the window borders from Kwin to Emerald.

3. If that works, then the final step seems to vary according to which Linux you're playing with. Kubuntu doesn't use the Fusion Icon that I find in the other distros, so you might need to try something like

 compiz --replace

and see if you get any action.

I'm a little surprised to see the metacity error. Did you mean to use metacity window decorations? It's a gnome decorator, and it may need to drag in other gnome stuff that you don't have. Personally, I'd lose the metacity package if you happen to have it installed. If you can get compiz working with Kwin and Emerald, then you can always try again with metacity, but I wouldn't start with it. :P

[Uber Nooblett]

Re: compiz/emerald randomly stopped working/starting up

this is what I get:

Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 05:00.0 0300: 10de:0193 (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Comparing resolution (2560x1024) to maximum 3D texture size (8192): Passed.
Checking for nVidia: present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.
Starting emerald

(emerald:8632): Pango-WARNING **: failed to create cairo scaled font, expect ugly output. the offending font is 'DejaVu Sans Bold 0'

(emerald:8632): Pango-WARNING **: failed to create cairo scaled font, expect ugly output. the offending font is 'DejaVu Sans Bold 0'

(emerald:8632): Pango-WARNING **: shaping failure, expect ugly output. shape-engine='BasicEngineFc', font='DejaVu Sans Bold 0', text='English Hello'

(emerald:8632): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_glyph_extents called with null font argument, expect ugly output
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Error: Another window manager is already running on screen: 0
/usr/bin/compiz.real (core) - Fatal: No manageable screens found on display :0.0
exec: 378: /usr/bin/metacity: not found
jj@JJs-Beast:~$ emerald --replace

(emerald:8639): Pango-WARNING **: failed to create cairo scaled font, expect ugly output. the offending font is 'DejaVu Sans Bold 0'

(emerald:8639): Pango-WARNING **: failed to create cairo scaled font, expect ugly output. the offending font is 'DejaVu Sans Bold 0'

(emerald:8639): Pango-WARNING **: shaping failure, expect ugly output. shape-engine='BasicEngineFc', font='DejaVu Sans Bold 0', text='English Hello'

(emerald:8639): Pango-WARNING **: pango_font_get_glyph_extents called with null font argument, expect ugly output

I've never used metacity... I've not changed a thing since it was working fine except I think there where a couple of updates, not sure what they where for though. I've always just used Emerald with my own skin and its just stopped working after a reboot for no apparent reason.

I did get it working fine with KDE4, but now KDE4 is totally knackered and wont work at all (I get no task bar at the bottom and it comes up in massive fonts now so I don't use it, will see if I can fix that by purging and reinstalling when I come back from Exeter.

glxgears works fine btw