Hello everyone, I have an issue with my vulkan install. Here is my general problem : I use my linux computer to play video games and I encounter instabilities with Blizzard’s Battle net. It seems to me that a good idea would be to identify the versions of the working installation (Proton, DXVK, Vulkan) and save them for backup or to prevent upgrades that could break it.

Concerning vulkan, my problem states as follow : I don’t know which is my current used implementation nor to which package and dynamic library it corresponds. It seems that there is 3 different implementations on my system : the default, one of AMDVLK and RADV. To make it clear, here are the commands used to switch between them :

  • doing nothing results in the default one
  • export VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/amd_icd64.json results in the AMDVLK one
  • export VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/radeon_icd.x86_64.json results in the RADV one

If it can help, I uploaded the corresponding vulkaninfo --show-all outputs here (txt and html formats).

Of course, Battle net works only with the unidentified one. I would like to obtain the following informations about it : type (amdvlk or radv), version(s), associated dynamic libraries paths, package name in my package manager. Can somebody help me to gather (even a part of) these infos ?

As a related question : since the default implementation is not associated to the previous mentioned icd files, can I generate one in order to make the install cleaner ?

Here is my neofetch output :

OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Host: MS-7C94 1.0
Kernel: 6.18.1-arch1-2
Uptime: 2 hours, 50 mins
Packages: 1253 (pacman)
Shell: bash 5.3.9
Resolution: 1920x1080
WM: i3
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (16) @ 4.559GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 5500/5500M / Pro 5500M
Memory: 5803MiB / 15910MiB

Thank you very much for your attention and help !

  • PersVyth@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    Thank you very much for your answers.

    I am using X11 and I launch battle net through lutris. It was hard to compare because I only played battle net games last months, but when I launch steam games from lutris, it works as good as if launched from steam.

    I experienced instabilities : battle net works then cannot be launched some weeks later then works again after some other weeks. I upgrade my packages every week, that’s why I suspect this problem comes from incompatible upgrades.

    I have only one gpu :

    # lshw -C video
  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Navi 14 [Radeon RX 5500/5500M / Pro 5500M]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:2d:00.0
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       version: c5
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
       configuration: depth=32 driver=amdgpu latency=0 resolution=1920,1080
       resources: irq:77 memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:e0000000-e01fffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:fcb00000-fcb7ffff memory:fcb80000-fcb9ffff

    After your comments I had the idea to test other windows pure games and it the result is the following : none of them work with the previous mentioned ICDs, so those latter seem nonworking. Thus I will avoid them, as advised by @[email protected].

    During nonworking periods, I had no error messages from battle net or lutris, just the Play button turning to Stop then to Play again after few seconds. So battle net just crashed at startup.

    I consider excluding the following packages from upgrades : mesa vulkan-radeon vulkan-icd-loader vulkan-mesa-implicit-layers and their lib32 counterparts. Do you think it will do the trick ?

    Thank you very much for your attention and help.

    • petrichornetrainfall@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      7 hours ago

      Just to clarify, when mentioning problems with battle.net (in general), the issue you’re talking about is that when you click play for a game, afterwards the button shows “running” then switched back to “play” without anything popping up, correct?

      If so, your issues probably aren’t related to anything on your machine except wine (as mentioned by other comments, don’t worry about drivers or vulkan or anything).

      There is a known issue that when switching between wine versions, if that exact scenario occurs, you have to blow away the wine prefix.

      For some games this is harmless, some save config files or saves for players in the prefix.

      Instead of trying to lock drivers or mesa or vulkan to specific versions, instead lock whatever version of wine you have set for battle.net in lutrus to a static version. That includes not using proton-experiemental or proton-ge latest, but instead a set version like proton-ge10.26 (or whatever).

      • PersVyth@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
        2·
        3 hours ago

        Correct ! One little thing : between “running” and “play” the battle net logo appears in the i3bar half a second.

        Got it, I already put this in place. However, I will lock driver and mesa for a few months anyway, just to see what happens. I will come back here to give a feedback !

        Thanks a lot !

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Ok…backup a second.

      Are you launching your Lutris games through Steam all the time? Depending on how you’re doing this, it could certainly be the problem.

      Can you show the launch command being used to start Battle.net if doing this from Steam? Does it seem more stable if you only launch through Lutris?

      • PersVyth@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
        1·
        22 hours ago

        I never launch lutris games through Steam. I wanted to say that I did the following tests :

        • Launch steam games through lutris, in order to verify how lutris work.
        • Launch windows-only games other than battle net through lutris, in order to verify the behavior of the export VK_ICD_FILENAMES= commands on other games.

        It appeared that steam games launched through lutris work (so, in my opinion, lutris works) and games launched with the export VK_ICD_FILENAMES= commands never run (so, in my opinion, those ICD files do not define a working vulkan environment).

          • PersVyth@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
            1·
            20 hours ago

            At the moment GE-Proton10-27 to lock a working version, by the past it worked with Proton Experimental too (but this one is constantly evolving, that’s why I avoid it now). I tried some others but none of them work when proton doesn’t.

            • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              20 hours ago

              Try just ‘Proton-GE’ (not the named version one), and not ‘GE-Proton’.

              Don’t run with the latest release of any of the regular Proton versions, especially Experimental because it’s unstable by nature.

              • PersVyth@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
                11·
                20 hours ago

                Why should I since battle net works at the moment with the previous mentioned version ?

                • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  20 hours ago

                  Because if you’re having stability issues, it’s NOT working well. The versions di mentioned is specifically targeted to work with Lutris, but the ones you’re running it on are not. Probably why you’re having issues.

                  • PersVyth@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
                    1·
                    19 hours ago

                    The default Lutris’ wine version is wine-ge-8-26-x86_64 by default for me, it can be installed directly from the lutris’ interface. And at the moment, it fails to launch battle net (unlike GE-Proton10-27). In addition, when battle net was in a nonworking period, Lutris’ wine versions failed to run it too.