Unable to Start unity target

[mandebooks]

Unable to Start unity target

[dnschneid]

Are you on Samsung's ARM Chromebook? It looks like the non-xfce targets mixed with the xephyr replacement for x11 result in not enough packages being downloaded to have a working system. If -t xfce,unity works, then this pretty much validates that hunch.

Your original -t unity was supposed to just work as expected (in fact, any -t should work as expected), so this is likely more a failure of the xephyr target's dependency list than a straight-out documentation bug.

I'll look into this in the next few days.

[mandebooks]

Yes, this is on Samsung's ARM Chromebook. I'm still waiting on the -t xfce,unity to finish, but I'll let you know if it works. Wasn't meaning your documentation isn't good - it is. I am just not familiar with the "target" process (still learning). Thanks!

[mandebooks]

With the -t xfce,unity I was able to launch xfce without a problem. The exact error I am getting with unity is as follows:

/chroots/
powerd stop/waiting
/usr/bin/xinit: unable to run server "X": No such file or directory
Use the -- option, or make sure that /usr/bin is in your path and
that "X" is a program or a link to the right type of server
for your display. Possible server names include:
Xorg Common X server for most displays
Xvfb Virtual frame buffer
Xfake kdrive-based virtual frame buffer
Xnest X server nested in a window on another X server
Xephyr kdrive-based nested X server
Xvnc X server accessed over VNC's RFB protocol
Xdmx Distributed Multi-head X server
/usr/bin/xinit: giving up
/usr/bin/xinit: unable to connect to X server: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/xinit: server error
powerd start/running, process 592
Unmounting /media/removable/External Drive/chroots//precise...

Sorry I didn't include the error the first time. I'll keep playing with xfce and see what happens as time moves forward. I still absolutely love the script though - being able to access Ubuntu without having to completely reboot the Chromebook is awesome and with the SDCard storage/target location I don't have to worry about running out of local space either.

[dnschneid]

See if running sudo enter-chroot exec xinit /usr/bin/unity -- /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc works.

Glad you are enjoying the script despite my fail at realizing xinit doesn't automatically check for a system-wide xserverrc. If the above works then it'll be an easy fix.

[mandebooks]

That script got it closer, the X11 interface came up quickly and the mouse displayed, but then when it actually tried to finish the init it all failed. Here is the error message:

chronos@localhost /media/removable/External Drive/bin $ sudo bash enter-chroot exec xinit /usr/bin/unity -- /etc
/X11/xinit/xserverrc
powerd stop/waiting
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi, removing from list!
[dix] Could not init font path element /var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType, removing from list!
/usr/bin/xinit: XFree86_VT property unexpectedly has 0 items instead of 1
unity-panel-service: no process found
Checking if settings need to be migrated ...no
Checking if internal files need to be migrated ...no
Backend : gconf
Integration : true
Profile : unity
Adding plugins
Initializing core options...done
Initializing composite options...done
libEGL warning: GLX/DRI2 is not supported
Compiz (opengl) - Fatal: GL_OES_EGL_image is missing
compiz (opengl) - Error: initScreen failed
compiz (core) - Error: Couldn't activate plugin 'opengl'
compiz (core) - Error: Plugin 'opengl' not loaded.
Compiz (opengl) - Fatal: GL_OES_EGL_image is missing
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
/usr/bin/xinit: connection to X server lost
waiting for X server to shut down
powerd start/running, process 32577
Unmounting /media/removable/External Drive/chroots/precise...
chronos@localhost /media/removable/External Drive/bin $

I know that the ARM hardware can run Unity fairly well. There is a great image called Chrubuntu that I was using. I sent the developer a message telling him about the Crouton script. Perhaps he knows of some specific xinit values that assist in getting Unity up and running. No rush - no worries here. XFCE will work for most of what is necessary (and has a smaller footprint). The main thing is there doesn't seem to be very good Cisco VPN support in XFCE (at least not one that is easy to configure).

[dnschneid]

I've investigated a bit, and it looks like the primary issue is hardware acceleration.
On x86 platforms, the graphics card hardware can be shared between the VTs, so Unity works fine.
On ARM, however, we can only have one X11 server touching the hardware at once. This isn't an issue on Chrubuntu, since it owns the sole X11 server anyway. In crouton, we have to play nice with Chromium OS, and instead create a nested X11 server using Xephyr. Which works great, and lets you toggle between the two seamlessly--the only issue is that you don't get video acceleration, so OpenGL/GLES is backed by software.
Unity and Compiz do not like this. Not one bit. So it looks like on ARM, we're limited to unity-2d (which works fine).
sudo apt-get install unity-2d
xinit /bin/sh -c 'unity-2d-panel & unity-2d-shell & unity-2d-spread & metacity & wait' -- /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
should get you some unity.

I'll make the necessary changes to xinit and the unity target to automate everything.

[dnschneid]

Okay, I've incorporated it into crouton. Update using the latest version and everything should work.

[mandebooks]

Unity 2D is working! There are still a few "odd" things with it, the standard Ubutntu Software-Center application won't run and neither will Network-Manager. Also trying to access the control panel for time/date doesn't work and the power button in the upper-right would not display the logout option. Either way I am sure it will improve with time.

[dnschneid]

Both need access to the system dbus, which you could run manually (sudo mkdir -p /var/run/dbus && sudo chown messagebus:messagebus /var/run/dbus && sudo dbus-daemon --system), but I'm not sure how it's going to like running in a chroot, or if it's a bad idea to have two system dbus daemons active. You could use the Chromium OS one (something similar to sudo mount --bind /var/run/dbus /usr/local/chroots/name/run/dbus from outside the chroot), but then software inside the chroot won't be able to create auto-launch service daemons, and software-center won't like that either. You probably don't want to run network-manager anyway, since Chromium OS still controls the network.

Not sure what's causing the date/time control panel to crash, but again, you probably want to configure that on Chromium OS's side (you can change the chroot timezone via sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata).

The power button doesn't have any options because we're not running gnome-session, which itself depends on the system dbus daemon.

Basically, gnome (and transitively, unity) assume too much about what is installed and what they have access to, which makes them less than ideal for non-shrink-wrapped environments.