Sim racing and bazzite
Recently I dipped my toes in sim racing and I could run dirt 2.0 and AC fairly easily with a controller. A few weeks ago I bought a G920 and so far the only game that works with it proper is Dirt 2.0. AC and rF2 are a nightmare. AC shakes the wheel or doesn’t recognize it, rF2 just keeps steering on it’s own (even when the car is stationary, with autosteer off). I also tried RSF RBR, which runs, but after the first launch it doesn’t detect the wheel anymore.
DKMS is not supported on bazzite, I couldn’t get new-lg4ff to work. Oversteer works, but is sort of useless without the driver. I’m a little bit disheartened at this point. Since I bought the wheel, I spent way more time troubleshooting than racing.
Does anyone have any experience running these games on bazzite with a G920? Is there an easy fix to all of these issues that I’m overlooking?
I’m way too settled into bazzite to distrohop now and I really wouldn’t like to have MS in my household.
My main priority would be to get RSF RBR running and then AC or rF2 to have something other than rally.
Thanks in advance for any input
I mean, not having DKMS sounds like it'd be obnoxious for gaming to me.
But if all you need is a kernel module, you shouldn't have to have it built via DKMS.
I don't use Bazzite, but the driver project has instructions for a non-DKMS build:
https://github.com/berarma/new-lg4ff
You're going to need to manually do a new build and install if you update your kernel, though, since otherwise the new kernel won't have that driver (well, unless the Bazzite people include it in the new kernel).
EDIT:
I haven't used an immutable distro, but if it's a problem, I'm sure that there's a way to defeat the immutability. If it just mounts the root filesystem read-only, then
Will probably do it.
I'm also pretty sure that you can use a non-standard directory with
modprobeand if you want to manually load the module out of some other directory. Looking at themodprobe(8)man page, looks like it takes a-dflag and an alternate module root directory.EDIT2: Hmm.
insmodmight be simpler thanmodprobe, since then you don't have to worry about dependent modules, especially if new-lg4ff is just a single module. It's been ages since I've insmodded something, but if it can take a path to a kernel module file, then one doesn't need to worry about havingmodprobesee bothnew-lg4ffand any modules that it depends on.EDIT3: Just realized one other bit of complexity. This isn't just loading a driver that isn't present. If some other driver is "claiming" the steering wheel first --- you say that it's working, but not with all the functionality you want? --- then you might need to prevent that other driver from doing so, or make it release the device, as I don't think that your steering wheel driver can claim the device if another already has it.
I'm gonna bet that it's usbhid. I think --- honestly, never looked into whether anything's changed since the udev daemon showed up --- that as soon as a module is loaded, it grabs all the devices that it recognizes. And another complication --- you don't want to prevent usbhid from loading, which is one approach that's used when an old, broken driver is used, because it gets used for all sorts of other things like your keyboard and mouse.
If you run:
You'll get a list of all of your
eventdevices. On my system, for example, I have:If you want to know which driver is associated with a given event device:
The xpad kernel driver owns that device for me. In your case, I bet that it's gonna be something like: "../../../../../../../../../../bus/hid/drivers/hid-generic".
From this:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51858074/preventing-usbhid-from-claiming-device
It sounds like doing an unbind will work to make the usbhid module release the device. That guy has a udev rule written, which will cause the udevd daemon to cause the usbhid driver to automatically release the device.
goes looking for an example of adding a udev rule
https://linuxconfig.org/tutorial-on-how-to-write-basic-udev-rules-in-linux
I think you might’ve just saved me there. Will give modprobe a try in the afternoon. Thanks a lot!
I just added one other followup -- you might want to try
insmodinstead ofmodprobe, sincemodprobeexpects more than just the single module, expects to have the other modules that that new-lg4ff might depend on visible to it...you might need to go set up a "duplicate module root" to makemodprobehappy, but withinsmodjust be able to insert the module file without any other mucking around.It will work until the next reboot (and I believe it won't work on Fedora 42 as it now uses composefs), on Fedora Atomic Desktops you have to use layers to add additional packages using rpm-ostree
(Edit: formatting)
There's an issue on Bazzite's repo asking for
new-lg4ffand other kernel modules to be added. While the issue is still open, it describes a workaround12 but it requires building the DKMS module and layering it on top of Bazzite on every kernel update.Edit: re-reading your post and Oversteer's README your wheel should be supported by the default kernel, I'm not sure
new-lg4ffwill fix your issue (and the latter does not list the G920). The issue must be somewhere else. I wish I could help you, but I have yet to try Assetto Corsa and Dirt Rally with my Driving Force GT on Bazzite.Footnotes
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/901#issuecomment-2054077901 ↩
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/901#issuecomment-2395749374 ↩
So, I'm far from knowledgeable enough to help you fully, but it seems like something is wrong with the games rather than with your wheel. If DR2.0 and oversteer both work (I'm assuming you mean with proper ffb) then that means that the wheel is being detected by your computer and that the driver, which for the g920 is already built into the kernel according to new-lg4ff, is working.
Like I said, I unfortunately can't help you other than suggesting reinstalling the games or using a different proton version, but hopefully this is enough to help you find a proper answer
Fellow sim racer! I asked quite a few similar questions on here before making the switch again (last time was 10 years ago and just on spare pcs that I put linux on). I am sorry I don't have in depth knowledge to help you; Mint with oversteer seems to work ok with my dfgt. I have tested it in AMS2 and beamng and it has worked well. Have not installed AC yet. Maybe try a quick install of mint on a spare drive and see if it works there ? I'd do that since it seems easiest. Then you know if it's distro related.
I’m yet to try BeamNG, would be cool to test some cars I built in Automation. I was a bit hesitant about AMS2 for some reason, but might as well give it a go. Although RBR would be the priority now.
Oh man, ams2 is miles ahead of assetto in terms of realism and tire physics. To me it's much more like real cars. AC makes things unnecessary hard for the sake of "sim racing is hard" but irl it's not actually like that.
I got new-lg4ff working some time ago and posted this on the Bazzite discord. I have not tried for some time though:
I managed to get new-lg4ff going at least on a per use basis. Not ideal this way but at least something. First you need to pull the driver from Github:
Then you need a toolbox matching your base image in my case:
Next you need to pull in the kernel-devel files. They are on a separate github page "kernel-bazzite". Find your running kernel version.
Then download the appropriate kernel-devel and kernel-devel-matched from https://github.com/hhd-dev/kernel-bazzite/releases, in my case:
Install them into the toolbox:
Then the build of the module should succeed. From the folder you cloned the new-lg4ff repo run:
To insert the module you need to relax SELINUX (against idea of SELINUX, but it is a hacky solution).
Then you should be able to insert the kernel module:
This is it.
Thanks for the awesome writeup! I’ll get to it next time I have a chance. Maybe it’s time to join the bazzite discord.
Yeah, unfortunately a lot of useful information is hidden in these discord groups these days. I'd much rather see stuff like this posted and discussed on the fediverse. I used the discord to gather the necessary information and then shared the write-up back there initially.
RHEL-based distros use akmods not DKMS.
A different distro isn’t going to help. It’s an issue of game telemetry and hardware not being supported. Unfortunately Simracing really requires dual-booting windows.
I was under the impression that new-lg4ff cannot be installed due to the immutable nature of the system. What I don’t understand is that dirt 2.0 works beautifully and from what I read on forums and protondb simracing is doable on linux, but all the positive stories came from people running traditional distros. I’m leaning on dual booting though, it just feels yucky.
Or having a Playstation 5 in the side to avoid Windows.
It’s what I’ll be doing with a Steam Deck/Playstation 5 combo.