Bug 107780

Summary: Screen is periodically replaced with image of screen from some time since boot
Product: Mesa Reporter: Zebediah Figura <z.figura12>
Component: Drivers/DRI/nouveauAssignee: Nouveau Project <nouveau>
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME QA Contact: Nouveau Project <nouveau>
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium    
Version: 18.1   
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64)   
OS: Linux (All)   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:
Attachments: dmesg output
X server log

Description Zebediah Figura 2018-09-01 15:27:27 UTC
Created attachment 141406 [details]
dmesg output

Sorry for the somewhat strange title, it's kind of hard to describe this bug.

Every few seconds, simply while normally using the desktop, the entire contents of the screen will be replaced by the contents, as they were apparently captured at some fixed point since boot. That is, it is as if at some point the contents of the screen will be captured, and thereafter swapped to the screen every few seconds. The screen is wholly and cleanly replaced, i.e. there are none of the usual signs of "garbage". Parts of the screen will update as normally, if they are triggered to be repainted, but the rest of the screen will contain this old image.

It's not clear to me what triggers this. Sometimes it will start almost immediately after starting an X session, sometimes it will take a long time to start happening. The frequency may similarly vary—to generalize, I'd estimate about every 5-15 seconds.

Regardless, the fact that it happens every few seconds makes the computer extremely frustrating to use.

I've actually experienced this bug since a fairly long time ago, probably on the order of a couple years. My solution to it then was just to install the Nvidia binary driver, which did not present me with this problem. However, my priorities have changed, and now I would really quite like to fix this bug and be able to use the Nouveau driver. I've tried to follow all of the instructions for bug reporting; please let me know if there's any information I'm missing, or extra logs or testing that I can provide. Knowing that developer resources are scarce I'm even willing to try to debug this myself, if nudged in the right direction.

zeb@terabithia:~$ inxi -SG --display :0
System:    Host: terabithia Kernel: 4.9.124-3-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750] driver: nouveau v: kernel 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.1 driver: nouveau resolution: 1280x1024~75Hz, 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: NV117 v: 4.3 Mesa 18.1.6
Comment 1 Zebediah Figura 2018-09-01 15:27:55 UTC
Created attachment 141407 [details]
X server log
Comment 2 Zebediah Figura 2019-02-07 17:13:06 UTC
Recently switched back from blob again and I don't seem to get this anymore, so tentatively marking as fixed.

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