Causes “libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast” an Huge Overhead in Parallel under Version 10.3?

Question

Under Linux (SUSE Linux Enterprise 11) for Mathematica Version 10.2/10.3 I observe the following error in parallel

libGL error: Try again with LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose for more details.
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

for the sub-kernels. This error does not occur for the master-kernel just for the sub-kernels. I also do not observe this kind of failure for Mathematica Version 10.0.

It seems to me that this failure causes an huge overhead in parallel when I execute the following function

LaunchKernels[12]

exportFrames[baseName_, a_, ext_:"jpg"] := Module[{l = Length[a], d}, 
 d = Length@IntegerDigits[l];
 ParallelTable[Export[baseName <> IntegerString[i, 10, d] <> "." <> ext,   Style[a[[i]],Magnification->1.5]], {i, l}]
 ]

exportFrames["Exp11krmovie",a1]

This function let me render and export several hundreds or thousands graphics in parallel. For instance, under Mathematica Version 10.0 I can render and export a test sample of several hundreds graphics in less than a quarter of an hour. In contrast, under Mathematica 10.2/10.3 I can only generate 1/3 of the sample in an hour.

Inspection by the network tool iftop reveals an one-sided network traffic. Moreover, the tool htop shows me that only the master-kernel is working and the sub-kernels are only showing up sporadical. As a consequence, there is no continuous flow of rendering and exporting the graphic files as under Mathematica 10.0. In average, each 4 minutes it starts to generate a set of 12 graphic files, whereas the whole cycle ends at least after 2 minutes.

Any idea how I can get rid of this error for the sub-kernels? How can I reset the graphic rendering from a software rendering back to a hardware rendering under Mathematica 10.3?

Answer 1

I noticed this problem recently (Feb 2016) following an update to Raspian's Jessie on the Raspberry Pi. My solution is probably specific to the RPi, and I apologize in advance if I am considered to have hijacked your question.

I noticed upon starting Mathematica that I would get a similar LibGL swrast driver error. Following the suggestions mentioned here (which is alluded to in the error message you receive) I set the LIBGL_DEBUG environment variable via export LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose and then re-ran Mathematica, receiving the following verbose message list:

libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dri/swrast_dri.so
libGL: dlopen /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No su
ch file or directory)
libGL: OpenDriver: trying ${ORIGIN}/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying ${ORIGIN}/dri/swrast_dri.so
libGL: dlopen ${ORIGIN}/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (${ORIGIN}/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so
libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so
libGL: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

For the RPi, the issue was not a missing symbolic link as assumed in the solution linked to above. I therefore suspected a missing package. Searching for swrast_dri.so on https://packages.debian.org/ reveals that this file is in the package libgl1-mesa-dri which I installed (sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri). Now, running Mathematica (after unsetting the verbose debug variable with unset LIBGL_DEBUG resulted in a warning-free start to Mathematica.

As I mentioned earlier, my situation is likely different; however it might be worthwhile to check your packages dpkg --get-selections | grep libgl1-mesa-dri and see if installing it also solves your problem.