Bug 98887

Summary:	Random, one second blank external screen upon window activation or keypress
Product:	Wayland	Reporter:	Dylan Semler <dylan.semler>
Component:	wayland	Assignee:	Wayland bug list <wayland-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED NOTOURBUG	QA Contact:
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium
Version:	1.5.0
Hardware:	x86-64 (AMD64)
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Dylan Semler 2016-11-28 14:31:08 UTC

Using Wayland and Mutter (the Gnome Shell compositor), my external monitor turns black for approximately one second randomly.  The events correspond to when I type or when the mouse cursor goes over a window, activating the window. It doesn't happen every keypress or window activation and is more common after the computer is idle for several seconds.  The occurrence is erratic and I've not found a series steps to reliably reproduce the behavior.  Note that only the external monitor turns black.

I have a video recording of the behavior[1] showing two black-out events.  The first corresponds to a keypress and the second corresponds to a window activation. I can't attach the video to the issue because I'm getting a 404 error when trying to download it from Google Photos.

When the screen blacks out, there are no new entries in the standard journalctl logs nor in dmesg.

I am running Fedora 25 on Google Pixel 2015 which has an Intel HD Graphics 5500 card.  The external monitor is connected via USB-C and has a resolution of 2840x2160.

I do not experience his behavior running X11.

[1] https://goo.gl/photos/kb4hFSqPdSXcBMvw8

Comment 1 Pekka Paalanen 2016-11-28 14:54:30 UTC

Hi,

Wayland does not deal with hardware. You might want to start by filing a bug with Mutter.

If the same happens with Weston, then it would be more likely to be a driver issue. You might want to check if the video mode picked by a Wayland compositor happens to be the same as what your Xorg uses, that could be clue.

Comment 2 Dylan Semler 2016-11-28 15:10:25 UTC

Thanks for your reply.

I was able to produce similar behavior on Weston.  I opened several terminal windows on the laptop's display and the external display.  When moving the mouse cursor from the external display to the laptop's display, the external monitor would black out for about one second at the moment the cursor entered the internal display's workspace.  Like with Mutter, it didn't happen every time, and often only if I clicked on a window in the external display before bringing the mouse to the laptop's display. (note I'm just clicking and releasing on the terminal window, not dragging the window across displays).

If I rapidly moved the mouse between the two displays back and forth, over and over again without clicking on either display, the monitor would never black out.

It's possible that clicking is required here because hovering over a window does not activate the window in Weston, Whereas my Mutter environment is configured to activate windows upon hover.

Any tips on how to find the video mode under wayland and X11?

Since you think it's a driver issue, should we change the bug's product and component to Mesa or do I need to open a new bug?

Comment 3 Daniel Stone 2016-11-28 16:10:47 UTC

Actually, it's not Mesa: it's a known kernel issue with the Intel KMS driver. This should be fixed in newer kernels, e.g. 4.8.6. Maybe try activating the Fedora updates repository, and see if a new kernel helps at all.

Comment 4 Dylan Semler 2016-11-28 17:07:09 UTC

Thanks.  I'm having the issue in Fedora's 4.8.8 kernel, as well as vanilla 4.9.0-rc6.

Comment 5 Dylan Semler 2017-04-09 15:32:06 UTC

I've installed Fedora 25 on a brand new Chromebook Pixel and am still experiencing this issue. One-to-two second black screens on certain keypress and mouse events,
 only when using an external monitor (with keyboard and mouse plugged into the monitor and the monitor connected to the laptop with usb-c).

Running kernel 4.10.8-200.fc25 now.

Happens only with Wayland (with Gnome and Weston), but not X11.

Comment 6 Daniel Stone 2018-06-04 08:31:06 UTC

If this is still happening for you, could you please file a KMS bug report, following the instructions here?

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/documentation/how-report-bugs

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