Bug 23662

Summary: X displays various artifacts, white lines all over the screen
Product: xorg Reporter: Bryce Harrington <bryce>
Component: Driver/RadeonAssignee: xf86-video-ati maintainers <xorg-driver-ati>
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG QA Contact: Xorg Project Team <xorg-team>
Severity: major    
Priority: high CC: 93fy5qj02
Version: 7.4 (2008.09)   
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)   
OS: Linux (All)   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:
Attachments:
Description Flags
Screenshot.png
none
Screenshot.png (against jaunty)
none
Xorg.0.log
none
dmesg
none
syslog with DRM debugging none

Description Bryce Harrington 2009-09-02 17:41:15 UTC
Forwarding this bug from Ubuntu reporter Lev Makhlis:
http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/391439

[Problem]
X displays various artifacts, dots and white lines all over the screen, same effect whether XAA or EXA is enabled.  (EXA also causes a freeze).

Reported against Jaunty originally but confirmed to still happen on Karmic with a recent git snapshot of -ati.


[Original Description]
See attached screenshot.  Dots and lines start appearing right after X starts.  After a while (usually a day or two), entire areas of the screen start filling up with flickering lines.
Note that my xorg.conf has XAA enabled because EXA causes X to lock up (bug #345224), but I've tried switching back to EXA and saw the same artifacts in the short time before X froze.

Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.12.1-0ubuntu2
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8ProcVersion: Linux version 2.6.28-13-generic (buildd@yellow) (gcc version 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4) ) #44-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 2 07:55:09 UTC 2009
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-video-ati
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-13-generic x86_64
Comment 1 Bryce Harrington 2009-09-02 17:43:08 UTC
Created attachment 29134 [details]
Screenshot.png
Comment 2 Bryce Harrington 2009-09-02 17:43:35 UTC
Created attachment 29135 [details]
Screenshot.png (against jaunty)
Comment 3 Bryce Harrington 2009-09-02 17:43:54 UTC
Created attachment 29136 [details] [review]
Xorg.0.log
Comment 4 Bryce Harrington 2009-09-02 17:44:14 UTC
Created attachment 29137 [details] [review]
dmesg
Comment 5 Alex Deucher 2009-09-02 22:44:30 UTC
please try with the latest git from master.  make sure you have:
794ae743c305331741e7cf45dd71c755fe325ed5
Comment 6 Bryce Harrington 2009-09-03 01:23:33 UTC
A Ubuntu package of 794ae743 can be found in this PPA for testing:

https://edge.launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa
 +  xserver-xorg-video-ati - 1:6.12.99+git20090902.794ae743-0ubuntu0tormod 

Comment 7 Lev Kandel 2009-09-03 06:35:00 UTC
Tested the package above; I still get the same screen corruption.
Comment 8 Lev Kandel 2009-09-04 20:05:28 UTC
Some additional info:
I see two qualitatively different types of corruption: (A) dots, lines and patches in random places; and (B) flickering lines across the screen. I don't know if they have the same root cause or not. The screenshot from Jaunty has both, and I still see both with 794ae743. That said, "B" manifests less frequently (typically within a day or two, whereas "A" starts happening right away), and when "B" does happen, a logout attempt causes X to freeze with 100% CPU (logout works fine before then). Today when the B-type corruption manifested, I captured a syslog with DRM debugging before and after a logout attempt. The X freeze in response to logout seems to be the same problem as bug 23661. Attaching that syslog.
Comment 9 Lev Kandel 2009-09-04 20:15:46 UTC
Created attachment 29244 [details]
syslog with DRM debugging

"Corrupted" X freezes in response to logout attempt
Comment 10 Alex Deucher 2009-09-05 07:33:19 UTC
Does:
Option "DisplayPriority" "HIGH"
in the device section of your config help?
Comment 11 Lev Kandel 2009-09-05 07:42:55 UTC
No; at least, I still see type "A" corruption right away. I can wait and see if type "B" still manifests eventually.
By the way, I've already tried AGPMode -- that didn't help either (blank screen with AGPMode=2, same problems as before with 1,4,8).
Comment 12 Alex Deucher 2009-09-05 07:53:29 UTC
AGPmode won't do anything in your case as your card is not AGP.  Please try the following options and see if any of them help:
Option "DRI" "FALSE"
Option "EXANoComposite"
Option "EXANoUploadToScreen"
Option "EXANoDownloadFromScreen"
Comment 13 Lev Kandel 2009-09-05 08:03:27 UTC
I've tried turning DRI off and that decreases, but does not eliminate corruption. In Jaunty, I saw corruption after about a month with DRI off, but with the latest snapshot I start seeing it after several minutes.

Just to clarify, the corruption happens with both EXA and XAA. I normally use XAA because with EXA, X freezes very soon (bug 23661). I can try and see if the EXA options make a difference in EXA mode if that's what you want.
Comment 14 Lev Kandel 2009-09-07 12:04:59 UTC
With AccelMethod=exa, EXANoComposite, EXANoUploadToScreen and EXANoDownloadFromScreen, screen corruption remains the same. But I haven't seen X freeze so far.
Comment 15 Michel Dänzer 2009-09-08 05:35:07 UTC
Did it ever work properly with older versions of X? Can you rule out a hardware problem, e.g. does it work in another operating system?
Comment 16 Lev Kandel 2009-09-08 06:32:14 UTC
There wasn't any corruption in Intrepid and before. It started when I upgraded to Jaunty. I'll see if I can confirm that with a live CD.
Comment 17 Lev Kandel 2009-09-18 17:17:27 UTC
It appears to be a hardware problem that developed over time. I rebooted into an old Fedora Core 9 installation with fglrx driver and now it also showed corruption, although less and different. A new graphics card (of a different model) works fine. I don't know for sure if bug 23661 was also caused by hardware (Fedora never froze), but it might as well be, and I won't be able to debug it anyway, so feel free to close it, too. Thanks for your patience with this. 

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