Ubuntu Gutsy.. not working

Can anyone here help..
I just reinstalled Linux and decided to use the latest 7.10 Gutsy build.
It all works swimingly... but..
I installed the BlitzMax 1.18... then went through installing the bits it needed until I got it working..
I made sure all was good by testing some of the sample apps.. Digesteriods worked.. and that has sound so I know everything worked.

Then I downloaded and ran the update to 1.24.
Now when I launch the IDE it fires up then closes immediatley.. no error message.. it just closes...

Anyone else had this.. any ideas what it could be ?

try opening it in terminal, it should give you a better error message..

I thought 7.xx ws fiesty :?
Are you using the GTK version of the ide, or the default one?

I basically trashed my old setup and installed from scratch.. I was only trying to get the default BlitzMax working.
<duh>.. yeah.. launch from terminal sounds just like the sort of thing I should have done !.. Ill try that tonight.

7.10 is the new release due out this month.. still currently in Beta but I figured as Im rebuilding the machine I may as well just go for that.
It all seems pretty stable.. no problems so far. The Compiz Fusion stuff looks kinda neat as far as eye candy goes.
There's loads of other new features.. apparently it can read AND write to ntfs partitiions... which is good... pity I removed XP enitirely about 6 months ago.

Anyways.. Ill try running from console tonight.

Well.. I never... I had messed up my machine while 'tinkering' so I reinstalled Ubuntu.. got it all up to date and then went throught the HowTo for 5.10 and made sure I had all the packages. Then installed BlitzMax... synch'd it... ran the update... syched again I and hey presto !... it runs :)

There is a small quirk... The new Ubuntu uses Compiz and when I ran the Digesteroids example which runs fullscreen it ran fine but when I quit it my desktop didnt restore.. It still had the remains of the game on the screen.. I had to select the maxIde and drag it around the screen to get the screen back ( the MaxIde was the only app which redrew itself .. minus the borders.

I guess Blitz doesnt do something required to force the OS to redraw the whole screen when it quits.

Still.. Im a happy bunny now.. all I gotta do now is put all my stuff back on the machine.

7.10 is the new version "Gutsy Gibbon".
I installed it today and found that the default maxIDE does not work for me either.

The error presented is:
*** glibc detected *** ./MaxIDE: free(): invalid next size (fast): 0x083a18f8 ***

the Backtrace shows:

======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(cfree+0x90)[0xb7bcf800]
/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5(_ZdlPv+0x23)[0xb7d7aa33]
/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5(_ZdaPv+0x1f)[0xb7d7aa8f]
./MaxIDE[0x8086722]
./MaxIDE[0x8086b12]
./MaxIDE[0x8086b3e]
./MaxIDE[0x80689ad]
./MaxIDE[0x./MaxIDE[0x806aa44]
./MaxIDE[0x806a94b]
./MaxIDE[0x804e781]
./MaxIDE[0x806a9f4]
./MaxIDE[0x806a974]
./MaxIDE[0x806a9f4]
./MaxIDE[0x806a974]
./MaxIDE[0x806a9f4]
./MaxIDE[0x8059675]
./MaxIDE[0x806a9f4]
./MaxIDE[0x806a974]
./MaxIDE[0x804e781]
./MaxIDE[0x806a9f4]
./MaxIDE[0x./MaxIDE[0x806a9f4]
./MaxIDE[0x806a974]
./MaxIDE[0x804ed86]
./MaxIDE[0x8081a9e]
./MaxIDE[0x8080cbd]
./MaxIDE[0x80c3541]
./MaxIDE[0x80d24b4]
./MaxIDE[0x80c5434]
./MaxIDE[0x80cc24e]
./MaxIDE[0x80b24fb]
./MaxIDE[0x80bdd3d]
./MaxIDE[0x80b2742]
./MaxIDE[0x80b27ac]
./MaxIDE[0x./MaxIDE[0x80ac0d5]
./MaxIDE[0x80abd69]
./MaxIDE[0x804cc78]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0)[0xb7b78050]
./MaxIDE[0x804cae1]

It worked just fine before the upgrade so I am assuming there is something wrong with external libraries that have changed after the Upgrade from Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 7.10.

I installed 7.10 from scratch, followed the Ubuntu guide in the link above, updated/sync'd mods, and it worked without a hitch.

If you're upgrading Ubuntu from 7.04, it might be worth going through the stickied installation guide thread and uninstalling the libraries listed, then reinstalling, perhaps with a reboot in between? (Or maybe just see if they can be updated to start with).

This is really a Mark/Skids job, though...

aye.. Using the installation guide thread to get all the required packages in the list worked for me. Though when I went through the upgrade route like you did I just couldnt get it to work.. not just BMax.. other things seemed to screw up as well. Thats why I ended up backing up all my home directory and just doing a full install.

I dont know enough about linux and the distribution packages but it would be nice for newbies if BMax could be packaged up so it will automatically include all required packages and maybe even add itself to the menu. I realize it probably depends on what flavour of linux your using but they are all based around a few core distro's arnt they ?
even just supporting 1 flavour would be good or including instructions with the download on what to do to get it working.

A total Linux newbie would get as far as downloading the demo.. finding it doesnt work and moving on.
Everything else for Linux seems to be packaged up so users can just click on the downloaded file and the package manager opens it up and includes all the additional packages automatically.
I seriously doubt any new visitor actually goes on the forums to find out how to get it working just to give it a try.

It seems like windows is the only easy platform. On the mac I had to go to apples site.. register as a developer so I could get whatever the heck it was I needed to get Max to work and linux requires you to download lots of additional libs etc before it works and the only way to find that out is to visit the forums and find the right thread.

If blitz cant or dont have time to do it does anyone here have the knowledge and time to simplify things for the Linux platform ?
It might persuade more Linux people to try it. In fact if you could get the demo version it all packaged up maybe it could get included in actual Linux distributions. Surely the time spent would be worth the potential additional customers.

There is no Linux demo to try, so the user would already have bought it and would already be committed and determined to get it to work. Their first port of call would be the forums where there are plenty of installation guides. I would imagine that most people would have tried the Windows demo or done some research before buying a product they can't try first.

However, I did note that the system requirements for the Linux version only state hardware OpenGL and nothing about the possibility of needing to download additional libraries.


The only other thing that needs to be installed is X-Code, which although not installed by default, does come on the OS-X DVD. Therefore, there is no need to register anywhere for anything to get BlitzMax to work.


On another note, I'll be installing 7.10 later on today after an update for 7.04 killed my 3D acceleration and my complete failure to get it to work again! Wish me luck!

Its probably just me not looking into things enough then I guess....

On the Mac I couldnt find the X-Code on the DVD so I went online to get it and to download it you need to register.

Good luck with the install... hope it all goes smoothly. Each new version seems to get better in terms of hardware support. This is the first version of linux Ive tried which has actually automatically installed the drivers for my nVidia card.

Thanks and couldn't agree more. Up until now I've had an ATI card and they've been a real pain in the ass! My new Nvidia card installed automatically without a hitch - although I'm currently limited to a maximum resolution of 1280x1024 at the moment. I'll figure that one out eventually, but until then I'm busy getting BlitzMax working again.

However, since such a person does not exist, it's not exactly going to be a problem. Yes it would be easier if you could just apt-get install BlitzMAX, and everything would work. However since BlitzMAX needs to also run on inferior OSes that don't use libapt, there really doesn't seem to be any alternative.

Well that's going to improve soon as AMD are open sourcing their drivers. Unfortunately some parts of the ATi drivers still use non-free source code, but once replacement source code has been written, I think you'll find AMD/ATi to be the champions of Linux graphics cards (and it's probably going to do wonders for the other platforms as well).

The Combiz Fusion eye-candy is nice and everything, but it seriously messes with your game screen refreshes. I got BlitzMax up and running and tested the current build of my project. It ran with terrible screen tearing in full-screen mode and I thought this was something to do with the drivers at first. I then tried it again by turning ALL eye-candy off and it ran just fine.

Windowed mode seemed just fine, but that may have something to do with the fact that windows never seem to sync with the monitor whether I want them to or not!

Anyway, that first point is something to think about for anyone who has released anything to the public who then start to get complaints about terrible screen tearing.

hmmm.. never noticed it on my machine.. though to be fair everything I write I tend to use in windowed mode.

Thats a bit worrying... seeing as how I suspect most people will have the eye candy turned on.

As mentioned earlier on I had a problem when I ran the Digestoeriods demo where when I quite the game the desktop did not redraw and I was left with a mess on the screen. I had to launch an app and drag it around the screen the get it back.

I do remember having a similar problem a while back when I used beryl where the screen savers had horrible tearing on them.

Do your screensavers have the same problem ?.. they look fine on my machine.. maybe there is a way for an app to tell combiz to effectively disable itself for your app when its running fullscreen.

I have that same problem too. Might need a mention in the bug forums if it turns out to be quite common.


Not that I noticed, but I generally don't have screensavers enabled and only use one of the OGL ones to check that I have successfully installed the 3D drivers. Can't check at the moment, as I'm in Vista currently.


Maybe, but that's out of my league, as I generally use code posted by the more knowledgeable around here for anything API related.

For the time being I'm just going to suggest that users disable and fancy eye-candy if they experience choppy screen updates in full-screen mode. If there's no way around it other than telling the user to manually disable these effects, then I may have the game default to windowed mode under Linux.

After a "CLEAN INSTALL" of kubuntu 7.10 BlitzMAX did not run nor did the 1.26 updater. Here is what I did to fix the problem:

# Change directory to /tmp:
cd /tmp/

# download deb package:
wget -c http://lug.mtu.edu/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gcc-3.3/libstdc++5_3.3.6-13ubuntu2_i386.deb

# unpack package to get library file:
dpkg -x libstdc++5_3.3.6-13ubuntu2_i386.deb libstdc++5

# copy library file to /usr/bin directory:
sudo cp libstdc++5/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5.0.7 /usr/lib

# change directory to /usr/lib
cd /usr/lib

# create a symbolic link to library
sudo ln -s libstdc++.so.5.0.7 libstdc++.so.5

"Linux, worth exactly what you paid for it?"

Well, it would seem that the old IDE is compiled against gcc 3.3 and its libraries... which isn't what you tend to find on newer installations.

Tis a shame it's not been updated and built on gcc4 - There's no reason for it not to have been, since mine runs fine on gcc4.

I know it varies from machine 2 machine but i have had many more problems with vista than with ubuntu 7.10 on my PCs, both laptop and desktop.

I would pay for ubuntu happily. Once set up i get none of the annoyances i get in windows. Everything is faster smoother and more reliable. Setting it up can occasionally be a pain, but its worth it in the end.

If your card supports AIGLX then you can simply set up 2 shortcuts. One to execute the command "metacity --replace" and the other "compiz--replace". This provides a quick switch to turn it on and off for apps where you want max possible power for games etc, without having to bring up the whole appearance dialogues.

Hi everyone, Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I have installed Blitzmax on 7.10, and search through all forum, everything is going okay, but when I compile the module, I get the following error:

/home/nadeem/Programs/BlitzMax/mod/pub.mod/glew.mod/GL/glew.h:1111:20: error: GL/glu.h: No such file or directory

I see that I have "gl.h", but not "glu.h". It seems on 7.10, you don't have "glu.h", So please could someone tell me how they fixed it

Thanks :)
Kind Regards

Searching the forum :-p ... reveals you may need to install this package :

libglu1-mesa-dev

Thanks Bruce, I did search the forum previously, which gave me useful tips like for g++4, use a symlink which works perfectly, it was just this final hurdle, and I don't know Linux packages that well :-)

Appreciate the help

Having problems getting even the 7.1 live CD to run properly. I get a light blue screen with mouse pointer but then it drops out to black screen and stops doing anything.

Check the disk to see if its ok. Then digg around the ubuntu forms to see if this problem crops up else where. You may have to enter some paramaters. Press F6(?) when the ubuntu install menu is shown. Then here is a posible solution http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=579393&page=2

Instead of symlinking you can just install the gcc-3.3. Just search for it in the repository. I installed BlitzMax under Ubuntu 7.10 with the packages that are in the repository. For easy search us Synaptic or Aptitude.

This doesn't work on ubuntu64 as there are no 32bit gcc libs avalibale (there is for gcc-4.1+ (multilib package)). So basically you a screwed if you need to build/re-build modules. The only way is for BRL to update there code to link to gcc-4+, which I would suspect would break there code for windows as (mingw gcc-4+) is only a technology pre-view at the moment.

MacOS X seems to be building against GCC 4. So I don't see what Windows using 3 has to do with anything.

I run Ubuntu 7.10. The official IDE seems to run fine for me, but I have encountered an issue in the CE IDE that might possibly relate to this somehow.

With a small GTK & freeprocess program, I get things locking up when I use CreateProcess. See thread below for details.

http://www.blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=76522