How can I solve ZED SDK OpenGL issues under Ubuntu?

After updating the NVIDIA® driver on an Ubuntu machine, or after a fresh installation, the ZED tools may fail to start, or the ZED SDK samples may crash, because of OpenGL problems.

This often happens on laptops and desktop computers with dual graphics adapters (hybrid graphics), when the operating system does not use the NVIDIA® GPU for rendering.

One of the most common error messages in this case is:

ERROR: Internal error <FBConfig with necessary capabilities not found> in function fgOpenWindow

Check the issue

Open a terminal console [Ctrl+Alt+T] and run the following commands (the first one installs the glxinfo utility, if not already available):

sudo apt install mesa-utils
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL vendor"

The correct output is:

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation

If you get something different, for example OpenGL vendor string: Intel, your system is affected by the issue described above.

Solution

Force the operating system to use the NVIDIA® GPU with the prime-select command. Check the current configuration:

prime-select query

If the output is different from nvidia, run:

sudo prime-select nvidia

and reboot the system.

Note: if Secure Boot is enabled, the NVIDIA® kernel modules must be signed (Ubuntu asks you to enroll a MOK key when installing the driver); otherwise the driver is not loaded. Disable Secure Boot in the BIOS only if you cannot enroll the key.

After the reboot, run glxinfo | grep "OpenGL vendor" again and verify that the output reports NVIDIA Corporation, then launch the tool or the sample that was failing.

If the problem is not resolved, please write to support@stereolabs.com describing the problem and attaching the report generated by the ZED Diagnostic tool; see this article.