Bug 209374

Summary: User gdm not listed in video group in handbook
Product: Documentation Reporter: bas
Component: Books & ArticlesAssignee: freebsd-gnome (Nobody) <gnome>
Status: Closed Overcome By Events    
Severity: Affects Many People CC: carlavilla, wblock, yonas
Priority: ---    
Version: Latest   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   

Description bas 2016-05-08 07:54:39 UTC 
In order for Gnome3 to properly work with 3D acceleration, the gdm user should be added to either the wheel or video group. The handbook doesn't mention this but I think it should in section 5.7.1.
Comment 1 Yonas Yanfa 2016-06-24 00:17:26 UTC 
This seems to affect more than gnome/gdm users.

I installed xfce4 on FreeBSD 11-CURRENT and discovered that adding myself to the video group enables 3D acceleration. There's quite a big difference in desktop responsiveness. Using YouTube is much faster.
Comment 2 Warren Block freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2016-06-24 21:53:44 UTC 
(In reply to Yonas Yanfa from comment #1)
Making the X user a member of the video group is documented already, in both the Quick Start and the first section after it:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-config.html

This bug is specifically about Gnome.  I don't know the requirements there.
Comment 3 Yonas Yanfa 2016-06-24 21:56:56 UTC 
(In reply to Warren Block from comment #2)

> Access to /dev/dri is needed to allow 3D acceleration on video cards. It is usually simplest to add the user who will be running X to either the video or wheel group. Here, pw(8) is used to add user slurms to the video group, or to the wheel group if there is no video group:

I was part of the wheel group, but I needed to be part of the video group. The documentation needs to be updated, but we should create another bug report for it.
Comment 4 Sergio Carlavilla Delgado freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2023-02-13 20:09:06 UTC 
The X11 chapter has been rewritten in: https://cgit.freebsd.org/doc/commit/?id=4d1de1c7246d147e1c428b542350695b8fedf84e