Xlib: extension "XINERAMA" missing on display ":0.0".

[DrMcCoy]

The Bard's Tale doesn't start for me on Debian GNU/Linux.

The error message is:
Xlib: extension "XINERAMA" missing on display ":0.0".

Yes, I do have two monitors, but they're two separate X screens, so of course there's no Xinerama. Why would the game even care about that?

[NoXPhasma]

Me too, WTH!

[Keyran]

I have the same problem on Archlinux, x64.

Xlib: extension "XINERAMA" missing on display ":0".
[1] 10985 segmentation fault (core dumped) ./BardTale

[DrMcCoy]

Well, it turns out that the only Xinerma function The Bard's Tale calls is XineramaQueryScreens(). It returns 0 (and sets *number to 0) if Xinerama is not available, but the BardTale doesn't check that (it also doesn't call XFree() on the pointer).

So, a simple LD_PRELOAD hack can fix that pretty easily:

#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <dlfcn.h>
#include <X11/extensions/Xinerama.h>

XineramaScreenInfo *XineramaQueryScreens(Display *dpy, int *number) {
  XineramaScreenInfo *(*orig_query)(Display *, int *) = dlsym(RTLD_NEXT, "XineramaQueryScreens");

  XineramaScreenInfo *orig_screens = orig_query(dpy, number);
  if (orig_screens)
    return orig_screens;

  printf("No Xinerama available, engaging fallback.\n");

  Screen *screen = XDefaultScreenOfDisplay(dpy);
  if (!screen) {
    printf("Can't get a normal X screen either. Terminating.\n");
    exit(-1);
  }

  XineramaScreenInfo *fake_screen = malloc(sizeof(XineramaScreenInfo));
  fake_screen->screen_number = 0; 
  fake_screen->x_org         = 0; 
  fake_screen->y_org         = 0; 
  fake_screen->width         = screen->width;
  fake_screen->height        = screen->height;

  *number = 1;
  return fake_screen;
}

Compile with

gcc -Wall -shared -m32 -fPIC -o noxinerama.so noxinerama.c -ldl

Put it into the The Bard's Tale directory and call the binary with

LD_PRELOAD=./noxinerama.so ./BardTale

BAM, works.

[DrMcCoy]

And for the lazy:

http://drmccoy.de/bardstale/noxinerama.c
http://drmccoy.de/bardstale/Makefile

And the precompiled thing:

http://drmccoy.de/bardstale/noxinerama.so

And small startup script:

http://drmccoy.de/bardstale/BardTale

(Rename the original BardTale binary to BardTale.orig, but the script in BardTale's place and put noxinerama.so in the same directory; and the game should even work from within steam)

[NoXPhasma]

Thanks for your hack! BTW I was unable to compile your sourcecode, I get some errors:

$ gcc -Wall -shared -m32 -fPIC -o noxinerama.so noxinerama.c -ldl
In file included from /usr/include/stdio.h:28:0,
                 from noxinerama.c:2:
/usr/include/features.h:324:26: schwerwiegender Fehler: bits/predefs.h: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Kompilierung beendet.

But with your linked so file it works fine!

[DrMcCoy]

Hmm, bits/predefs.h is a system include, it should come with the dev package for the (e)glibc. On my Debian system here, that would be libc6-dev (and libc6-dev:i386 for the 32bit version; they are identical though and the only difference is where they are installed).

[NoXPhasma]

The problem is solved, installing libc6-dev-i386 did the trick, thanks.

[step_jac]

This workaround should no longer be required as this has been fixed upstream. Our apologies for this oversight.

[DrMcCoy]

Thanks :)