ubuntu 11.10 xterm error, black screen freeze

[Capt. Noobuntu]

Just installed Ubuntu 11.10, and I've been trying to install vegastrike, but have had this xterm error coming up during installation:
Error opening terminal: xterm.

This happens after it says, "Installation successful."

I tried a solution http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=454 linked to in an ubuntuforum, but when running the cd /usr... line I get a "no such command" response. I've run all the lines both *exactly* as they appear, as well as by substituting my username for "usr" in the command lines, but both approaches yield the same result "no such command."

Second issue (related?) is that when I then try to run the game, I get a black screen with a white mouse cursor, but it won't exit or proceed to anything else from there.

Sorry...total noob taking up your time, but I can't find any more info through Google. Any thoughts on what I'm bungling up here? Thanks!

[CLoneWolf]

Well, first of all, those commands can't be executed by a normal user, as they work on system directories; so, in Ubuntu, you have to use the sudo command to get root privileges; second, the /usr directory is not meant to be replaced by your username, it's a system directory, kinda like Windows or Windows\System32.

First of all, try checking if xterm is actually installed, either from your Software Center, or typing this in a terminal:

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dpkg -l xterm

Look at the result, like this:

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Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
un  xterm          <none>         (no description available)

if the first two characters on the line regarding xterm are ii, it's properly installed; if they're un like in this example, it's not installed.

To install it, do it via the Software Center.

Then, here's what you'd have to type in Ubuntu to apply that solution if the problem still persists:

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sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/terminfo/x

cd /usr/share/terminfo/x

sudo ln -s /lib/terminfo/x/xterm xterm

The first command will create a new directory, the second will enter it (no need for special privileges just to enter it, so no need for sudo), the third will create a link to the actual xterm program.

HTH

[TBeholder]

That is, either install packages into system directories as a superuser, or manually install somewhere else (it will work if all dependencies are installed). Same for download/compile/play SVN version: it works from where it's compiled, or can be moved - all the same, as long as it can find data.

[Capt. Noobuntu]

Sweet. xterm was already properly installed, and the command lines you gave worked great -- I actually got the config box to come up. (I had tried them all in sudo previously, but it seems that was not the right approach for changing directories.) Thanks!

However, and most importantly, it didn't solve the stall at a black screen when I try to run the program. I've never been able to see what the terminal is saying as the program loads, because I cannot exit from the black screen (though the mouse does move), and so I do a manual shutdown and restart. Any thoughts on this one?

[CLoneWolf]

Ouch, no specific ideas, sorry, but some more preliminary checks:
what video card do you have? Have you installed its 3D enabled drivers?
In my case for instance (nvidia) I'd like to be able to use the open drivers (nouveau) but they're not yet up to par for 3D, so I have to use the proprietary drivers.
Also for ati you can choose between open and proprietary drivers, intel integrated chipsets are supported too, but their performance might be poor.

As for when you get stuck, shutdown is way too drastic, Linux will leave you more room for recover moves

Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 it should bring you to a text-only console login; login as your normal user, then issue this command:

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killall -9 vegastrike

then press Ctrl-D to log out, then press Alt-F7 to go back to your graphical environment; if 7 is not the right number in your case (it depends on how many console logins are active) try the numbers from F2 up.
You might find some info in the terminal you ran the game from. If that info is not enough to understand what's wrong, next time run the game not just by typing ./vegastrike but

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./vegastrike 2>vserr 1>vsout

This will create 2 text files in the same folder, vserr containing errors, vsout the regular output; you can check them with the text editor, and attach them here in case you still have problems.

[TBeholder]

Xterm has nothing to do with VS. Therefore, it's a terminal launched to install packages, which can be done only by superuser, and that's the problem.

[Capt. Noobuntu]

As to the graphics card, that was my first line of investigation. I've got an early series Radeon card (RS100 Radeon IGP320), and it is supported by the open source driver, which is what the update slapped in there for me upon installation. So, even though it sucks, in theory I should have adequate 3d acceleration.

I also had figured out how to open up a console, but I didn't know that "killall" command -- very nice to have in the tool-belt. I've attached the two files that were produced by the latest run. In perusing them it definitely looks like I'm missing something, or the program isn't finding what it needs. I downloaded a 497MB file from the sourceforge page, the tar.bz2 format, so I'd be surprised if I'm actually missing files.

...okay, tried to attach the files, but got a message that "The extension is not allowed." So I'm copying the text below.

Here is the vserr text:

GOT SUBDIR ARG =
Found data in ..
Using /home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0 as data directory
USING HOMEDIR : /home/matt/.vegastrike-0.5.0 As the home directory
CONFIGFILE - Found a config file in home directory, using : /home/matt/.vegastrike-0.5.0/vegastrike.config
MISSION_NAME is empty using : main_menu.mission
Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Could not find platform dependent libraries <exec_prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
running import sys
print sys.path
sys.path = [r"/home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/modules/builtin",r"/home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/modules",r"/home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/bases"]
testing VS randomrunning import sys
print sys.path
open /dev/[sound/]dsp: No such file or directory
OpenGL Extensions supported: GL_ARB_multisample GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_logic_op GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_copy_texture GL_EXT_polygon_offset GL_EXT_subtexture GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_texture GL_EXT_texture3D GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_ARB_multitexture GL_IBM_multimode_draw_arrays GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_light_max_exponent GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_EXT_framebuffer_object GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_MESA_window_pos GL_NV_packed_depth_stencil GL_NV_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_occlusion_query GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_window_pos GL_EXT_texture_cube_map GL_APPLE_packed_pixels GL_ARB_draw_buffers GL_ATI_draw_buffers GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3 GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_MESA_ycbcr_texture GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_OES_read_format GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp GL_EXT_texture_rectangle GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_OES_EGL_image GL_ARB_copy_buffer GL_ARB_robustness
OpenGL::GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array unsupported
OpenGL::Accurate Fog Distance unsupported
OpenGL::Generic Texture Compression supported
OpenGL::S3TC Texture Compression unsupported
OpenGL::Multitexture supported (3 units)
OpenGL::TextureCubeMapExt supported
OpenGL::S3TC Texture Clamp-to-Edge supported
OpenGL::S3TC Texture Clamp-to-Border supported
Vertex Program Error: Failed to compile lite
Vertex Program Error: Failed to compile lite
Vertex Program Error: Failed to compile lite
Vertex Program Error: Failed to compile lite
OpenGL::EXTColorTable unsupported

And here is the vsout text:

In path /home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/bin
Vega Strike
See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html for license details.

Using .vegastrike-0.5.0 as the home directory
Found MODDIR = /home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/mods
DATADIR - No datadir specified in config file, using ; /home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0
SIMULATION_ATOM: 0.05
['/usr/local/lib/python24.zip', '/usr/local/lib/python2.4/', '/usr/local/lib/python2.4/plat-linux2', '/usr/local/lib/python2.4/lib-tk', '/usr/local/lib/lib-dynload']
['/home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/modules/builtin', '/home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/modules', '/home/matt/Matt/Apps/vegastrike-0.5.0/bases']

Thanks for the help!

[TBeholder]

Fail on all GL functions? It looks like there's no OpenGL present. On ubuntu 11, if you have both glx and driver marked as installed, but still no working 3d acceleration, it's probably multiarc glx bug. Proposed workaround works for me, if applied to all buggy packages - from sudoer account, of course.

[CLoneWolf]

Sorry, not being able to spot anything too bad in those logs, I planned to run the game myself and compare the outcome, but I'm on SVN and the output has changed too much for me to try understanding how far the Captain's 0.5.0 goes before he has to kill the game; any working 0.5.0's around that could do the check?

[Capt. Noobuntu]

Okay, thanks for trying. Hopefully there are some other ubuntu wizards running this version who will spare a moment to help me investigate.