Desktop stuck on software rendering (LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE set)

Question

In my 17.04 desktop session,

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1

is set in the environment for all processes. That's clearly a bad idea.

I suspect that this happened because I temporarily had a bad OpenGL setup, and something decided to fall back to software rendering. The problem is that there is no indication whatsoever how to get unstuck.

FWIW, OpenGL works just fine with hardware acceleration when removing the environment variable:

unset LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1; glxinfo

gives the expected output and so on.

Furthermore, LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE is not set when logging into the system via ssh.

So what is your question exactly? Have you checked the usual suspects (i.e. shell configuration files, starting from ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile if you have one, back through /etc/profile.d/*, /etc/profile, /etc/environment)? — steeldriver, Apr 24 '17 at 14:48
@steeldriver I should have noted that the variable is not set when logging in via SSH, so it has to be related to the desktop login process. — Nicolai Hähnle, Apr 29 '17 at 17:49
Hmm... based on this previous answer What happens under the covers to log me in and start up Unity or another Graphical User Interface? it's possibly being set via the /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50_check_unity_support script. What is the result of executing /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p -f -d :0 manually? — steeldriver, Apr 29 '17 at 22:14
Thanks for the hint. That wasn't it, but I got lucky and at least found a way to fix it. — Nicolai Hähnle, May 03 '17 at 12:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 03 '17 at 12:24

2

Running the following command once and then logging in again fixed the issue:

systemctl --user unset-environment LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE

Unfortunately, I still don't know what caused the setting in the first place.

answered May 03 '17 at 12:24

Nicolai Hähnle

61

Desktop stuck on software rendering (LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE set)

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