VirtualBox nixos guest missing 3D acceleration

[viric]

In NixOS 16.03 I enable VirtualBox guest additions (virtualization.virtualbox.guest.enable = true) and I properly get Direct Rendering in X.org but it still uses the swrast GL code. In VirtualBox I do enable "3D acceleration" but I guess there should be some userlib in the guest that makes GL go through the vm for the acceleration.

Does anybody know how to get this 3d acceleration?

Thank you.

[domenkozar]

Did you check if guest additions are correctly installed and enabled?

[viric]

Sure, they are installed. I also made the guest nixos module put virtualbox_dri.so to /run/opengl-driver/lib/dri, but that did not help.

My X log only says:

vboxvideo: kernel driver found, not loading.
modeset(0): using drv /dev/dri/card0
...
AIGLX: Screen 0 is not DRI2 compatible
AIGLX: reverting to software rendering

I tried with 'modeset' in cmdline too, no difference.

[viric]

Ok, I have a dirty patch that makes it work. Basically, libGL.so.1 should point to VBoxOGL.so, instead of the mesa one. Then, acceleration works.

But in my machine, Optimus (Intel+NVidia), I fail to make the acceleration go through NVidia and I only get the Intel acceleration. Like this poor guy: http://superuser.com/questions/779070/use-nvidia-gpu-from-virtualbox (but it is another topic).

We should think how to add a nixos option that makes the libGL.so.1 override in opengl-drivers/lib

[viric]

btw, here is the source from where I got the idea of the symlink: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/49752

[husnoo]

I was able to get it to work using the link you provided:

LD_PRELOAD=/nix/store/jbyg9nzcg405qw8byjg5p35fnhkknivz-system-path/lib/VBoxOGL.so glxinfo | grep -i render

Any ideas how to make this the default using my configuration.nix?

thanks!

[rehno-lindeque]

I think that #9415 may be somewhat related.

[rehno-lindeque]

Also #1608 and #5051

[lovek323]

I'm having the same issue. I can get good output from glxinfo in a similar way to @husnoo, but I am not sure where to go from here.

[rehno-lindeque]

I'd been meaning to submit a PR for this, but unfortunately I'm no longer on VirtualBox.

Last time I tried it this expression in my config worked more or less:

{ pkgs
, config
, ...
}:

let
  makePackage = p: p.buildEnv {
    name = "mesa+vbox+txc-${p.mesa_drivers.version}";
    paths =
      let version = "5.1.12";
          virtualboxGuestAdditions = p.linuxPackages.virtualboxGuestAdditions.overrideDerivation (oldAttrs: {
              /* src = p.fetchurl { */
              /*   url = "http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/${version}/VBoxGuestAdditions_${version}.iso"; */
              /*   sha256 = "08a3vycj7yw6ihb3myi9yhag1ivpwdl9m5c33viw66lpmdf2d80k"; */
              /* }; */
              buildCommand = lib.traceShowVal oldAttrs.buildCommand +
                ''
                  ln -s $out/lib/VBoxOGL.so $out/lib/libGL.so
                  ln -s $out/lib/VBoxOGL.so $out/lib/libGL.so.1
                  ln -s $out/lib/VBoxOGL.so $out/lib/libGL.so.1.2.0
                  # TODO: in the next version add EGL? 
                  # patchelf --set-rpath ${lib.makeLibraryPath (with p; with p.xorg; [ "$out" dbus libXcomposite libXdamage libXext libXfixes ])} lib/VBoxEGL.so
                  # cp -v lib/VBoxEGL.so $out/lib
                  # ln -s $out/lib/VBoxEGL.so $out/lib/libEGL.so
                  # ln -s $out/lib/VBoxEGL.so $out/lib/libEGL.so.1
                  # ln -s $out/lib/VBoxEGL.so $out/lib/libEGL.so.1.2.0
                '';
            });
      in
        [ virtualboxGuestAdditions # for the DRI driver
          # p.mesa_drivers
          # p.mesa_drivers.out # mainly for libGL # (TODO: replace?)
          (if config.hardware.opengl.s3tcSupport then p.libtxc_dxtn else p.libtxc_dxtn_s2tc)
        ];
  };
in
{
  hardware = {
    opengl = {
      /* FIXME: See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/5051#issuecomment-64393958 */
      package = makePackage pkgs;
      /* extraPackages = [pkgs.linuxPackages.virtualboxGuestAdditions]; */
    };
  };
}

I hope it'll be helpful for someone that wants to submit a proper PR.

[cgo]

@rehno-lindeque, I am relatively new to nixos, just trying to get it to do what I want for the second time (tried a while ago). When I simply paste your configuration snippet from above in my configuration.nix,
and call nixos-rebuild, it complains that the variable lib is undefined.
Any hint what I am doing wrong? Thanks!

[vcunat]

@cgo: typically one adds lib to the parameter list at the start, but it's also accessible e.g. as pkgs.stdenv.lib.

[vcunat]

BTW, setting videoDrivers = [ "virtualbox" ]; on the guest nixos config is supposed to do all this automatically. Now I see this setting is even done by virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.x11 = true; If this doesn't work, it's a bug somewhere in the implementation. (I've never tested this myself.)

[rehno-lindeque]

BTW, setting videoDrivers = [ "virtualbox" ]; on the guest nixos config is supposed to do all this automatically.

@vcunat @cgo To clarify, the expression above makes use of virtualbox's VBoxOGL.so for hardware acceleration. Without this you get software-only rendering for 3D graphics. Never-the-less I wouldn't recommend this ugly hack unless you specifically need it or want to submit a PR.

[nek0]

any movement on this?

[flokli]

This should get fixed by #60985.

[ambrop72]

This should get fixed by #60985.

I don't think so. The problem is that the 3D support in VirtualBox additions relies on programs loading VBoxOGL.so in place of libGL.so, it (presumably) doesn't play with libglvnd. The current additions package doesn't provide the symlinks from libGL.so to VBoxOGL.so which supposedly fix this issue. Actually, #60985 will make it a bit harder to get this working once LD_LIBRARY_PATH no longer contains /run/opengl-driver/lib (one could still set it manually though).

But since the Linux 3D support on VirtualBox has a questionable support status and is known to have issues, I would be reluctant to make it enabled automatically even if we support it.

[flokli]

If virtualbox would support libglvnd, this would have fixed it in a nice way.

But unfortunately you're right. Seems adding libglvnd and/or fixing some of the unstable 3d guest support is very much down on Oracles priority list: https://www.virtualbox.org/pipermail/vbox-dev/2017-June/014561.html

We should probably add some documentation on how to load VBoxOGL.so manually, but seems using 3d acceleration from a Linux guest currently isn't really advisable…

[zarelit]

@flokli @ambrop72 In the last two comments it looked like the #60985 would NOT solve the issue, does this mean that it has been fixed or that this has been closed accidentally?

[flokli]

@zarelit as explained in the mail linked in my comment, 3d guest support is pretty much broken in virtualbox upstream too, and fixing that is far down on Oracle's priority list:

In fact, as soon as I get round to it I will disable 3D support for
Fedora guests altogether, as it is not reliable.

On top of that, it's probably not really possible to run it in NixOS either, due to it not supporting libglvnd.

I guess this would need to be fixed upstream first.

I opened #61944 which changes virtualboxGuestAdditions to not install VBoxOGL.so, with a comment on why.

[zarelit]

@flokli thank you for the clarification on for your work on this!

[husnoo]

just to clarify, there's a working solution for this, but we're not going to make it easy for ideological reasons? did I understand this right?

[flokli]

@husnoo The reasons are mostly technical, given even upstream considers their driver to be unstable and are thinking loudly about disabling it entirely.

This could be made "easy" by passing in the VBoxOGL driver (together with the required libGL.so symlinks) through hardware.opengl.extraPackages, behind a virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.enableHardwareAcceleration option. I'd be reluctant to unconditionally enable it on virtualisation.virtualbox.guest.enable together with the other additions, given its unstable nature (we could flip the default if/when things improve).

I was just assuming there wasn't too much need in supporting that, given nobody stepped up with a PR after a possible solution was sketched in March 2017.

I'd be happy to review a PR adding this option, though ;-)