Screen corruption: 8.6 and System Monitor (Ubuntu)

[Porter]

I'm having an odd screen corruption problem with Catalyst 8.6 that didn't occur under 8.5.

When I run the Gnome System Monitor utility (v2.22.1 under Ubuntu Hardy) and try to scroll in the process list or move the window, I get strange repeating screen corruption behind the active window, all over the screen. The corrupted areas include the title bar of the active window but not the main window area. From the pattern and repeated content, it looks as though the driver is trying to redraw the active window but is writing to the wrong locations on-screen.

Some of the corruption writes itself out eventually with manual GUI visual activity after closing System Monitor, but it persists in many areas that do not have interactive elements. Restarting X is the only way to clean it up once it starts.


This behavior does NOT occur when compiz is turned on. It only occurs in the standard 2D window manager (Metacity).


Any ideas, guys?

[Porter]

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

[Dandel]

i have encountered this bug, and it took me a while to figure out the fix... and here's what you do.


uninstall the fglrx Driver completely.
delete the contents of /etc/ati
reboot and then reinstall driver.
reboot again, and then enjoy.

[Porter]

i have encountered this bug, and it took me a while to figure out the fix... and here's what you do.


uninstall the fglrx Driver completely.
delete the contents of /etc/ati
reboot and then reinstall driver.
reboot again, and then enjoy.


What is that intended to accomplish? I deleted the contents of /etc/ati when I installed the driver manually two days ago.


I'll give it a try, though. Thanks for the suggestion.

[mtippett]

I'm having an odd screen corruption problem with Catalyst 8.6 that didn't occur under 8.5.

When I run the Gnome System Monitor utility (v2.22.1 under Ubuntu Hardy) and try to scroll in the process list or move the window, I get strange repeating screen corruption behind the active window, all over the screen. The corrupted areas include the title bar of the active window but not the main window area. From the pattern and repeated content, it looks as though the driver is trying to redraw the active window but is writing to the wrong locations on-screen.

Some of the corruption writes itself out eventually with manual GUI visual activity after closing System Monitor, but it persists in many areas that do not have interactive elements. Restarting X is the only way to clean it up once it starts.


This behavior does NOT occur when compiz is turned on. It only occurs in the standard 2D window manager (Metacity).


Any ideas, guys?

You didn't mention your hardware, I would expect a radeon 9x00 or X800 family. Most likely you have turned on TexturedXRender in xorg.conf from some other random web posting.

Remove it and you should be fine.

As has been communicated elsewhere, modifying configuration files by hand is not a recommended way of configurating the driver. The aticonfig or amdcccle are the two recommended ways of configuration.

TexturedXRender is a developmental feature that is not currently supported. As such it will regress on occasions.

Regards,

Matthew

[Porter]

You didn't mention your hardware, I would expect a radeon 9x00 or X800 family. Most likely you have turned on TexturedXRender in xorg.conf from some other random web posting.

Remove it and you should be fine.

As has been communicated elsewhere, modifying configuration files by hand is not a recommended way of configurating the driver. The aticonfig or amdcccle are the two recommended ways of configuration.

TexturedXRender is a developmental feature that is not currently supported. As such it will regress on occasions.

Regards,

Matthew

My card is a Mobility X1400 on a Lenovo Thinkpad T60. TexturedXRender is not on.

The "Device" section of my xorg.conf contains only: Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
Driver "fglrx"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

No extraneous options of any kind.

[Porter]

Any ideas? You still out there Matthew?

Thanks for your help by the way.

[bridgman]

I'm not sure if texturedxrender can be turned on by amdpcsdb, or how thoroughly aticonfig --initial scrubs the amdpcsdb contents, but that would be the next thing I would check.

[Porter]

Bridgman,

What's the procedure to wipe all settings and start totally fresh? Apparently uninstalling the previous driver and installing the new one may not have been enough... is there a way to do that easily?

I saw the post above about deleting the contents of /etc/ati but I wasn't sure if that was an ATI-recommended approach.


Also, if uninstalling the previous driver packages and installing the new ones followed by an aticonfig --initial doesn't actually result in a fresh configuration, it may explain why so many different people have been having such inconsistent results with the new drivers. If that is actually the case, there may be a huge number of completely incorrect settings (manual workarounds and dirty fixes for problems in earlier releases) that are unintentionally in play on a large number of systems.

Thanks!

-Porter

[bridgman]

I'm pretty sure that aticonfig --initial sets things up properly after a fresh install. What I don't know is whether it will fully reset everything after using the driver and adjusting settings manually etc...

[Porter]

This install of the driver has never had any manual settings whatsoever. I cleaned out xorg.conf down to just the driver declaration prior to uninstalling 8.5 or installing 8.6. I have not manually set TexturedXRender since 8.2 or 8.3 I think.

Is uninstalling the fglrx packages using Synaptic not sufficient to actually uninstall everything? I would have thought that a fresh install of the driver would write an entirely new, fresh amdpcsdb.

[Dandel]

the bug did not exist in 8.4 driver, however it's worthy to note that it only seems to appear when one disables compiz fusion.

[Porter]

Ok, I tried the scorched earth approach.


I uninstalled 8.6.

I deleted the amdpcsdb manually, leaving /etc/ati totally empty.

I cleaned out *everything* in xorg.conf that was related to the display.


I then reinstalled 8.6 from the packages created by the script, and ran aticonfig --initial.



After reboot, same behavior.


Bridgman, mtippett, are you out there? Let me know if this is a known issue. No big deal if so, but let me know.

[seanbarman]

I have the same problem. I have never uninstalled the old driver, just installed the new one and have had no problems. The drivers are also getting slower with each release. A slow speed for more stability is ok but slow speed but more unstable thats a joke.

I can't play any form of video with 8.6 and get a lot of screen corruption going from full to window mode.

8.5 works fine but hangs on log out.

Will hold off buying hd4870 till this is sorted out.

[bridgman]

Porter, thanks for doing that. Seems like the issue is probably not a rogue setting. Will go back and read your original problem again ;)

seanbarman, when you say "slower" can you give a bit more info please ? What degree of slowdown are you seeing and on what kind of operations ?

[Dandel]

I have this issue, the problem of course stems from having compiz fusion disabled on 8.5 and 8.6... currently 8.4 does not exhibit this issue.

[Joshi7791]

Hello!

After install of the new ati linux driver 8.6 the opengl screensaver have a freeze after 10 min. I dont know how to fix that. I have tried to change the screensaver, but it does not work. Any idea? I use Ubuntu 8.04 and compiz fusion version 0.76, all packages are up to date.

The problem with screen flickers in opengl applications is solved with the new driver 8.6, but now there is the freeze of the screensaver, wich is opengl.

With the ati linux driver 8.5 and 8.4 the was not the problem with the freeze.

[Joshi7791]

Hello!

After install of the new ati linux driver 8.6 the opengl screensaver have a freeze after 10 min. I dont know how to fix that. I have tried to change the screensaver, but it does not work. Any idea? I use Ubuntu 8.04 and compiz fusion version 0.76, all packages are up to date.

The problem with screen flickers in opengl applications is solved with the new driver 8.6, but now there is the freeze of the screensaver, wich is opengl.

With the ati linux driver 8.5 and 8.4 the was not the problem with the freeze.

I have tried to deactivate compiz fusion, but then there is the same problem with the freeze. I think, it is not a problem of compiz fusion, but i hope, that it is solved with driver 8.7 ...:)

[Porter]

Porter, thanks for doing that. Seems like the issue is probably not a rogue setting. Will go back and read your original problem again ;)

Thanks Bridgman, I appreciate your help. Let me know if you need me to capture any logs or anything of the sort.

[Porter]

Interesting. I ran into another issue last night when I tried to launch a very simple 2D windows utility using Wine. The whole display went nuts, visual corruption everywhere, with the screen doubled horizontally (everything at half width and duplicated on the left and right sides of the screen). Totally unreadable due to the mosaic blocking everywhere.

I used CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to restart X and everything was fine. Started the same wine app with no problem on the second attempt. I'm running the latest Wine from their direct repo.

This screen corruption issue was different from the one I described earlier in the thread... that one was a momentary scramble in the screen buffer while System Monitor was drawing to the screen. This one was an ongoing scrambled output from the card that seemed more like a hardware-level issue.

Any thoughts? Anyone else experiencing this sort of thing?


[edit] The visual corruption I experienced looked very similar to the third image in the Cedega thrad: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10940

This is on Hardy 8.01, Catalyst 8.6, Mobility X1400, latest Wine (1.1.0 stable from WineHQ Ubuntu repo).

[seanbarman]

Hi,

Performance has got slower with each release glxgears was around 18000
now down to 15000-16000. Also nexius slows down some times, I mean it's hardly cutting edge. I can play crysis fine in windows 1600x1200 with a few shadows on medium the rest high, but on linux it struggles with nexius

[Dandel]

i managed to fix this corruption, while still maintaining the ability to play videos using the Xvideo extension, please look at my device section to fix your own desktop...

Section "Device"
Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]"
Driver "fglrx"
# enable XVideo out.
Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
# Textured 2D was on.
# Turned off due to bugs with rendering the gnome system monitor.
Option "Textured2D" "off"
# Textured X renderer has default of on.
# Turned off due to bugs with rendering the gnome system monitor.
Option "TexturedXrender" "off"
EndSection


and on a quick note, on 8.6 this does not fix the issues with wine, however most everything else works fine... i tested it on a Radeon X1900GT.

[Porter]

Why would Textured2D and TexturedXRender default to "on"? The developers who participate here are pretty adamant that those features are still experimental and are disabled by default.

Could be an "oops" in the 8.6 release?

[Dandel]

Why would Textured2D and TexturedXRender default to "on"? The developers who participate here are pretty adamant that those features are still experimental and are disabled by default.

Could be an "oops" in the 8.6 release?

that's a good question... however as i stated before the system monitor exhibits the bugs only when one disables compiz fusion... and by setting those settings i mentioned before to off it fixes it, in my experience, while not breaking the XVideo support.

[Porter]

What card are you using?

TexturedVideo is necessary for Xv acceleration on the R5xx and higher.

It should be set by default though... I assume you're using an older chipset, due to your use of VideoOverlay? You shouldn't need to specify it in xorg.conf though, if that's the case. The driver is set up to properly use VideoOverlay or TexturedVideo as appropriate depending on the chipset.

I'm just trying to eliminate possible secondary variables.

[Dandel]

What card are you using?

TexturedVideo is necessary for Xv acceleration on the R5xx and higher.

It should be set by default though... I assume you're using an older chipset, due to your use of VideoOverlay? You shouldn't need to specify it in xorg.conf though, if that's the case. The driver is set up to properly use VideoOverlay or TexturedVideo as appropriate depending on the chipset.

I'm just trying to eliminate possible secondary variables.

ok... as to help reduce the secondary variables, here is the most important details...


Ubuntu 8.04 ( with all the latest patches )
FGLRX 8.6 ( currently in use, most problems fixed by the above mentioned bug, except for the issues related to Wine.)
FGLRX 8.5 ( not using, but was unusable for 1600x1200 resolution. )
FGLRX 8.4 ( end regressions here, only bugs related to dual monitors really. )
AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ ( manchester core )
Epox EP9NAJ+ Ultra
1024mb Corsair valueselect memory (DDR400, PC 3200)
CMedia based Auzentech sound card.
Radeon X1900GT (R580 core )