artifacts in Intrepid + nvidia binary drivers

[phenest]

I had been discussing this (with myself) on Ubuntu's forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=919623 (there is a screenshot there of the problem).

Ubuntu Intrepid
Linux precision 2.6.27-4-generic #1 SMP Mon Sep 22 04:40:15 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

This happens regardless of whether I use Metacity or Compiz, or use AWN ppa or AWN from Synaptics. The only common factor is if I use the proprietary nVidia driver (any of them). AWN is fine with the open source nv driver.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Please attach the screenshot here, as some of us don't have ubuntuforums accounts.

Which version of the binary nvidia drivers do you have installed?

[phenest (steve-clark)]

All versions of nVidia drivers that have been in Intrepid: currently 177.76. The 173 variants have the same result.

(Screenshot attached)

[Tony Thomas (autonymous)]

Confirmed. Also using Nvidia 177.76. Has done this for me as well since the 173 variants.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

I think Xrender + composite has some problems with nvidia cards using the binary driver (some worse than others). For example (only tangentially related to the problem):

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=117850

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

Where the thin white lines are, do you normally have applets/separators? Also, what happens if you only a new window (and Awn resizes), do the artefacts move to another area, or are they consistent? The same question for restarting Awn, do the artefacts appear in the same place or random places every time?

[blakamin (blakamin)]

Confirmed again: Having same problem using 173.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

To all reporters of this bug: could you please answer the questions posed by Neil in comment 5?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/awn/+bug/273326/comments/5

[blakamin (blakamin)]

<quote>Where the thin white lines are, do you normally have applets/separators? Also, what happens if you only a new window (and Awn resizes), do the artefacts move to another area, or are they consistent? The same question for restarting Awn, do the artefacts appear in the same place or random places every time?</quote>

Applets, artifacts are consistent.
Will attach screenshot when I get the network manager bug sorted.
Got worse in latest update.

[blakamin (blakamin)]

wish I could edit:
Applets and Separators
Sorry

[Tony Thomas (autonymous)]

I do not have separators where the artifacts appear. In fact, I at first believed Cairo-Clock to be the culprit, so I removed it. No dice. The artifacts seem to prefer the last 2-3 icons on the right end of the bar, no matter how many applets are loaded.

[phenest (steve-clark)]

Some applets seem unaffected, such as: Weather and the Cairo Clock. PyNot, for example, is affected regardless of whether it's in the middle of other applets or on the end.

If there is any consistency, it is with the applets; that is, it always affects the same applets.

This screenshot shows a 'remnant' of the weather applet on PyNot next to it.

[phenest (steve-clark)]

Amendment to previous post:

The Weather applet IS affected. I meant to say the Terminal applet.

[phenest (steve-clark)]

Also, when the AWN bar resizes, the artifacts stay with the applet.

[reference2myself (reference2myself)]

I have the same problem, here's a video of it. My lines are black because of my theme.

[Jim Raredon (decoy-umd)]

I can confirm this as well with the above conditions.
I have no applets that are failing, and no separators at that point.
Also using NVidia driver 177, compiz, Intrepid.
Have tried both Intrepid and PPA repos for AWN.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Out of curiosity, is there any change with the new 177.80 drivers?

[phenest (steve-clark)]

I'm using the 177.80 driver and there's no change.

[Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek (liviopl-pl)]

these are mostly not artifacts - an applet probably hanged or didn't loaded.

I had this with stacks.

[Jim Raredon (decoy-umd)]

It's not a hanging applet problem. I have identical setups on a Unichrome card (using Openchrome from Intrepid) and Nvidia (using 177.80). Applet hangs/crashes produce a very thin white line. See all the screenshots above, this is different.

[LostinSpacetime (lostinspacetime)]

I want to confirm this bug and also answer to Neils questons:

Where the thin white lines are, do you normally have applets/separators? Also, what happens if you only a new window (and Awn resizes), do the artefacts move to another area, or are they consistent? The same question for restarting Awn, do the artefacts appear in the same place or random places every time?

The lines do not look exaclty the same each time. They are random, but seem to prefer certain places, like applets at the right end, especially with a separator. In this case the lines appear almost every time I'm opening a new application (resize->bigger). Otherwise it happens at the start of AWN. The lines are staying, exept they appeared just over an icon. In this case one only has to hover over the icon, and the animation(refresh) erases the lines.

When using Metacity(with composite), the lines also appear, but only for a short time, while growing the dock.

The easiest way to reproduce, is to add the desktop switcher to the right with a separator at it's left.

The version of AWN I'm using, is 0.3.1.

[moonbeam (rcryderman)]

A quick comment to note that the _brief_ appearance of white lines or white blocks is a known issue and mhr3 has indicated that there is a fix for the issue (seemingly it'll take a little bit of work to implement though it should be relatively straightforward). Just posting the clarification for potential new posters to the thread as I don't want the issues to get mixed together.

The corruption that is being observed over the icons is definitely something new ( seemingly once again being inflicted by the joy that is Nvidia drivers). What is curious is that LostInSpacetime seems to be experience the issue as a Compiz/Nvidia (and others?) issue while phenest (and others?) seem to be seeing the issue with Metacity also.

Of particular interest at this point is whether the results others get trying to duplicate the issues with Nvidia/metacity and/or Nvidia/Xfwm4 (don't forget to enable the compositor in these WMs).

thanks,

[schambee (e-schamberger)]

i have (had) the same bug with awn 3.1 / compiz 0.7.8 / ubuntu 8.10 with the applets on the right side. so i tried a little bit and moved the applets to the left side of the dock and the launcher bar to right and surprisingly the bug is gone. no more vertical lines anymore.

[Jim Raredon (decoy-umd)]

I can confirm this fix from schambee. I did the same and all artifacts are now gone! Go figure...

[Michal Hruby (mhr3)]

I already mentioned on IRC some time ago that I'm seeing similar problem (not colored artifacts as here, but the applets' window is shrinked, which causes draw problem) in vector-effects branch with my _intel_ driver, so I definitely think this is AWN's problem, not driver problem.

Though in trunk version I see a "blink" of the rightmost icon, not the same problem as in my branch, anyway I think these are related.

In my branch I see that the rightmost applets get their window resized down when taskmanager icon disappears, I believe this causes the problems (after hovering the applet - which causes redraw, it is resized back to its original width). Visible after almost every resize.

I can also confirm that I have a separator between the taskmanager and applets, so that also might be cause.

[moonbeam (rcryderman)]

Michal,

I'm really not convinced this is an awn issue.

I have seen drawing issues with your branch (Xorg ATI drivers) also but:
1) The drawing issues I've seen really do seem to be different than what we're seeing in this bug.
2) I have never seen _this_ drawing issues in any of the other awn branches.

Admittedly this may be an awn problem but I'll be much more inclined to this view _if_ this issue can be duplicated with :
a) Non proprietary Nvidia video drivers (I am not convinced what happens in vector effects is the same issue).
b) Something other than Intrepid.

We can break down the possibilities to basically:
1) Nvidia. Given the history of 2d (render) acceleration issues of Nvdiia drivers and the lack of reports of this issue with other drivers I really do think this must be given a great deal of credence.
2) Awn. In which case I guess the use of the Nvidia drivers on Intrepid and the vector effects code are triggering this issue(s)... Admittedly a possibility.
3) Library issues (possibly idiosyncracies of the gtk automagic layout code).
4) Combination of the above.

Regarding the fact that these types of issues seem to show up most on the right side (though not always the rightmost) I tend to think it's due to how gtk does its layout.

[bjb1959 (bart-burroughs-cox)]

Schambee's fix worked for me as well. moved the taskbar to the right and lines and blocks disappeared.

[kulight (kulight)]

strange but moving the task bar to the right does work and now it also adds new windows to the edge of the bar instead of the middle so it's also more elegant

[bjb1959 (bart-burroughs-cox)]

update... Schambee's fix worked for a day but then it started again. no matter where I put the taskbar right or left I get the artifacts. but now it seems to be when the system boots only. after I move my mouse cursor over them to make them disappear they don't seem to come back for the rest of that session so far as I can tell.

[Jim Raredon (decoy-umd)]

I second the report from bjb1959. It still created artifacts on login, but one swipe of the mouse makes them go away for the duration of the Xsession.

[kulight (kulight)]

update
the vertical line are gone with the task bar on the right but the artifacts on the icons still appears from time to time
(the same xsession )

[Michael Kogan (michael-kogan)]

I can confirm this bug, too. Video card: nVidia 7600GT.

Hardy: No problem.

Intrepid:

Binary driver (177.80): having the same artefacts as all the others here, independent on the window manager (tested Compiz, xcompmgr, Metacity)

Nouveau driver: no artefacts! Unfortunately the driver is too slow for Compiz so I could test it on Metacity and xcompmgr only.

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

Seems an Intel user have a similar problem : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/awn-extras-applets/+bug/288504

[Shawn (ogarro)]

The fix works I think because with the Launcher/Taskmanager at the right end it initiates its own redraws. If you are in the awn-manager and try reordering any of the applets, the artifacts come right back regardless of where they are. It seems like anytime an applet is not the cause of its own repaint, it is vulnerable to not being redrawn properly.

[steets (rene-steetskamp)]

Confirm this bug and Shawn's observation: when I hover over the AWN icons they are redrawn correctly.

Ubuntu 8.10 uptodate with stock AWN, NVIDIA (versions 173 and 177 installed, but 173 active and can't seem to activate 177) and compiz

[steets (rene-steetskamp)]

Just thought I'd add the screenshot below, as most of the other screenshots show vertical lines, while I sometimes see horizontal ones. I don't know if that's relevant. Both examples in the attachment come from the same screenshot.

Moreover, I just realized I also have occasional anomalies in the title bars of my windows. I will try to add a screenshot of those when I encounter them again.

[reader4 (cbrace1)]

I throw a me-too into the ring. I mostly see this problem on the right-most icons, but it affects the shiny switcher as well and cannot be resolved because mouse-overing doesn't create an effect for that applet. It is also left of my launcher bar (screenshot attached).

[Frank Geraets (frank-evesion)]

Hi people I have the same problem and I noticed that it only occurs when you use Applets. A lot of Applets, like for example shutdown, desktop or system monitor..can be replaced by Launcher to resolve the problem.

[glennric (glennric)]

Frank, your solution is not very practical. One of the primary reasons that I use avant is for the applets. If I just wanted launchers and a task manager I would probably switch to cairo dock. It is much smoother in appearance. Awn has had these artifacts for a long time with any video card. It wasn't until the nvidia drivers in Intrepid that the artifacts stopped disappearing.

[phenest (steve-clark)]

I'm running nVidia beta driver 180.06, and I have not seen any artefacts. Seeing as this is an nVidia issue and not an AWN issue, it is safe to say that this is fixed if you use this driver version.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Can anyone else confirm this?

[Guillaume Lanquepin-Chesnais (guyomel)]

Me, I confirm. No artefacts with beta driver 180.06

[glennric (glennric)]

The 180.06 drivers may solve the problem if your video card is supported by those drivers. I have a GeForce FX 5200 which is apparently going into legacy now. It is still supported by the 173 drivers but nothing newer. There needs to be a fix for those drivers.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

I suggest that someone affected by the bug should post on the nvidia forums with this bug, and note that it is fixed in driver version 180.06 and ask the nvidia developers whether it can be fixed in earlier versions of the driver (and post a link to the thread here).

[bjb1959 (bart-burroughs-cox)]

I have the same problems and do not have the new drivers. a temporary solution would be to use Cairo-Dock instead. I have attached a screenshot of mine. some people like it a lot more then avant and it is considerably more configurable. It does not suffer from the issues with artifacts like awn does and works fine with without the new drivers for nvidia. You can add the repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list with this code:

## cairo-dock
deb http://repository.cairo-dock.org/ubuntu intrepid cairo-dock

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Um, out of curiosity, do Awn users go onto the cairo-dock bug tracker and advertise Awn as a "temporary solution" to cairo-dock bugs?

[bjb1959 (bart-burroughs-cox)]

I thought we were trying to help people who wanted to use a dock launcher get something that worked?? or is this all about telling people that it's nvidia's fault?? I have used awn for years and periodically have problems. If you want to use something in the meantime while Nvidia or awn or whomevers fault (if blame is what we are looking for) it is fixes the problems then I was offering a solution. Some people will probably opt to use cairo-dock permanently instead if it fits their need better and some will like awn better and be willing to wait for awn? nvidia? whomever to fix the problem. Those who prefer to have something that works now is who I was trying to help. Sorry you took it so personally but I wasn't aware this was a "don't ever say anything bad about awn" site. I thought people here were looking for a solution, not excuses. My bad.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

The problem was identified as being the Nvidia binary driver's historically bad X RENDER extension support. A fix has been identified as upgrading to the latest beta drivers, if possible. Because a user's card might not be supported by the beta drivers, I have suggested that these users should inquire to Nvidia (via their forum) to see if they will be backporting these fixes to the older drivers. I don't particularly think that suggesting another dock is appropriate for a rendering issue. A frequent crasher, sure, assuming that the fix cannot be diagnosed and fixed in a reasonable amount of time. I could make analogies using this scenario using other software, but I don't really feel like it.

[bjb1959 (bart-burroughs-cox)]

I really didn't mean to upset anyone, I use awn on 2 of my 3 machines, the ones still running hardy. just using the other on the intrepid machine until awn gets working on it.

[vaughn (vaughngrisham)]

I just upgraded the nvidia driver for my geforce 7600gs to 180.06 and my artifact problems are gone (along with some weird window drawing errors I was having). The driver is available from nvidia.com's driver beta section.

[vaughn (vaughngrisham)]

PS to bjb1959: No offense take here. I hadn't tried Cairo Dock and your post gave me the opportunity to do so. A little information never hurt anyone, which to me is one of the core values of the open source community. Now that the driver upgrade has fixed my dock, I'll keep on trucking with AWN though.

[Robert Banfield (rbanfield)]

I see the mention in the recent comments that this is a nvidia bug. Just in case, and at the request of an earlier comment, I will say that this also affects Fedora 10 using RPMFusion NVIDIA drivers

akmod-nvidia.x86_64 177.82-1.fc10.4 installed
kmod-nvidia-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64.x86_64 177.82-1.fc10.4 installed
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia.x86_64 177.82-1.fc10 installed
xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs.x86_64 177.82-1.fc10 installed
avant-window-navigator.x86_64 0.2.6-9.fc10 installed

[glennric (glennric)]

Do those of you who claim the bug is gone with the new 180.06 drivers still see the white boxes, lines, or general artifacts when the tray is resized? Those were there in Hardy, they are still there with any type of video card (Intel, Nvidia, and probably others), and I bet you are still seeing them with the newer drivers too. They probably disappear quickly for you just like they did with the Nvidia drivers in Hardy.

This is a bug in awn, and this is the same bug that is causing these artifacts with the 173 and 177 Nvidia drivers. Some additional bug in these drivers is making those artifacts hang around instead of disappearing. It seems to me that the issue is with both the 173 and 177 Nvidia drivers, and Awn. Those of us who can't use the 180.06 drivers will need to see fixes in these drivers. I have a GeForce FX 5200, which is being moved into legacy support, and hence does not work with the 177 or 180 drivers.

Who knows what is going on with Awn. Development of that seems to have almost completely stopped.

[lucianob (lucianobordon)]

i have had a weird experience, I've changed my nvidia 8400 for a nvida 7600. The artifacts didnt appear with the 8400 but they do now with the 7600. :P I hope the change of launchbar last because I don't want to try some beta drivers

[Guillaume Lanquepin-Chesnais (guyomel)]

@lucianob

I use beta drivers without troubles, not too unstable. If you don't use your computer for production, I guess you can use it. But do what you want ;-)

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

Nvidia drivers 180.11 are available in today updates. Can people who have the problem try with this new drivers and report any problem with it and AWN ?

Thanks.

[Michael Kogan (michael-kogan)]

Everything perfect now with the new driver. Btw, maybe you should mention that the driver package is avaible in the backports only. :)

[enyone (enyone)]

And where is the 64bit version of that driver available (Intrepid) ?

[Julien Lavergne (gilir)]

Good :) Thanks for the test.

The drivers are available in the ubuntu/intrepid-updates, so you don't need to activate the backports. You only need to install the nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 package. The changelog mention intrepid-backport but its' in updates in reality :)

See :
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/intrepid-changes/2009-January/009592.html
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/+source/nvidia-graphics-drivers-180/180.11-0ubuntu1~intrepid1

[Michael Kogan (michael-kogan)]

I've found the second link, too, and wondered what happened, but I couldn't find anything about the new driver in Synaptics and activating the backports was the only thing to solve the problem. But, however, the driver is installable on one or another way and the bug is gone now. :)

[Anon Ymous (arctos)]

That fix (nvidia driver) is still not available for 64bit. I can't find it in backports nor in regular updates... trying to install nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 says not found...

[lucianob (lucianobordon)]

search nvidia on synaptic and pick anything with a 180 in the name I have intrepid 64bits and i have the drivers. the artifacts are gone.
the packages are:
nvidia-glx-180
nvidia-180-kernel-source

[exzemat (exzemat)]

i have activate 180 in synaptic
now, i've artefacts juste after the boot when applets move.
after 5 minutes everythings is all right

intrepid 8.10 +nvidia 8400 gs +awn 0.2.6
i am tried awn bzr, i've the same problemes

[Inspired (inspired)]

I found this page whilst looking for info on this issue with Avant.
I have what seems to be the same ploblem... artifacts consisting of white boxes and white lines appearing in Avant when it first loads (at which point only the platform and a bunch of lines appear) through to when it resizes and other circumstances.

I have an HP Compaq nx7010 which does not use Nvidia for video. It has an ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics controller. So I question whether this issue is NVidia specific. Also, is there somewhere I can find info on this issue AND an ATI Radeon?

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Inspired, please see the following comments:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/awn/+bug/273326/comments/25
https://bugs.launchpad.net/awn/+bug/309864/comments/7
https://bugs.launchpad.net/awn/+bug/309864/comments/9

[exzemat (exzemat)]

now i use only trash applet
I have white box when applet is moving
if I do an right-select on the applet and "clear all customs icon" the problem disappear
strange

[Chris Wood (symbolis)]

Just a note, the following is found in the notes for version 180.22 of the Nvidia drivers:

"Fixed a regression that could result in window decoration corruption when running Compiz using Geforce 6 and 7 series GPUs."

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Marking invalid, as this is a driver issue.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Same here.

[exzemat (exzemat)]

I'm using nvidia 180.22 now (https://launchpad.net/~mythbuntu-trunk-0.22/+archive/ppa)
nothing change!
I've always artifacts!
are you sure that this problems come to nvidia drivers ? to my mind, it's a awn...

[glennric (glennric)]

The persistent artifacts are finally gone with the 173.14.18 nvidia drivers. I have a GeForce FX 5200 card, which does not work with the 180 series nvidia drivers. Of course the artifacts are still there, they just flash and disappear just like with any other video card.

[kulight (kulight)]

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 11:51 +0000, glennric wrote:
> The persistent artifacts are finally gone with the 173.14.18 nvidia
> drivers. I have a GeForce FX 5200 card, which does not work with the
> 180 series nvidia drivers. Of course the artifacts are still there,
> they just flash and disappear just like with any other video card.
>

how did you get the 173.14.18 nvidia driver ? manualy ?

[glennric (glennric)]

I created my own package using the driver downloaded from nvidia's website. The package is available from my launchpad ppa. Add the following repository to install it:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/glennric/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main