window title changes cause window decorator to render poorly

[Matthew McGowan]

Binary package hint: compiz

Using Hardy with nvidia-glx-new.

Window title changes cause gtk-window-decorator to render poorly.

To reproduce:

1) Using the email app Thunderbird from the main repo's, click 'Write' to compose an email.
2) Begin typing a subject heading for the email, notice the window decorator title changes to reflect what you type for the subject.
3) Every third character added or edit made results in a corruption of the window border. Specifically, the border becomes completely transparent except for where the window title should exist there is an array of pinkish and whitish pixels. See attachment. A subsequent change to the window title results in perfect rendering again.

[Matthew McGowan (mmcg069)]

Example image of when things go bad.

[Murat Gunes (mgunes)]

I think this is a duplicate of bug #186382. What was mentioned as a separate issue in that bug was perhaps the behavior causing incorrect colors of buttons, not this glitch.

[Matthew McGowan (mmcg069)]

In case it matters anymore.

The window border i was using was Splint, found here: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Splint?content=58917

[Data (ubuntuaddress)]

mmnz:
Does this bug still occur to you after today's kernel-update in hardy?

[Tristan Schmelcher (tschmelcher)]

I am continuing to see this even after the fix for bug 186382, but I have only ever noticed it with Eclipse. (I'm using 3.3.1.1 Classic, installed directly from www.eclipse.org.) Note that I am seeing it simply on focus change as described in my dupe. Attached is a screenshot taken just now. When the title bar messes up, it is always more or less the same pink colour. Here's the proof of kernel update:

$ uname -r
2.6.24-17-generic
$ apt-show-versions | grep nvidia
nvidia-kernel-common/hardy uptodate 20051028+1ubuntu8
nvidia-glx-new/hardy uptodate 169.12+2.6.24.12-17.36
nvidia-settings/hardy uptodate 1.0+20080304-0ubuntu1

(I never had any problems with shadows.)

[Datadog (pkutzner)]

I too am still experiencing this bug after the latest kernel updates. Two things I've discovered about this bug:

1) Reverting back to version 169.04 (or earlier) of the nVidia drivers "fixes" the problem. The problem seems to present itself in every version later than 169.04 with Hardy.
2) Installing xserver-xgl gets rid of the problem.

I consider both of the above actions to be work-arounds, as opposed to fixes. The newest drivers definitely have noticeable performance gains over the 169.04 drivers. installing xserver-xgl makes X crash for me when trying to run glxgears with the following message in /var/log/messages:

May 27 11:25:19 usagi kernel: [ 254.600717] Xgl[7547]: segfault at 00000cf8 eip b7a97b0a esp bf8ed700 error 4

My thought is that there might be a regression in the nvidia drivers, since the problem disappears with the older drivers. But I'm not a developer, so...

I have other posts regarding this issue in bug #186382

[SlappyTheFish (info-4pmp)]

I'm also having these problems with Hardy:

- Window border disappears on every fifth character when typing the subject in Thunderbird
- Window title goes pink when the window title changes, most often seen in Krusader

I was also beginning to think it's a problem with the nVidia drivers

[bigskank (aslong80)]

I am having the same problem with the title bar turning pink with scrambled text.

I'm running Hardy 8.04
Kernel: 2.6.24-16-generic
Compiz turned on with default settings. Version 0.7.4
Nvidia non-free (proprietary) driver with a 7300GS card, version 169.12 of the driver

I would like to try the workaround mentioned by Datadog regarding xserver-xgl, but am concerned about side effects.

[sirianni (eric-sirianni)]

I see this problem with base install of Hardy:

I've tried both versions of "libwfb.so" that I have in /usr/lib/xorg/modules and both still exhibit the pink window titles:

$ ll lib*wfb*
libnvidia-wfb.so.1 -> libnvidia-wfb.so.169.12
libnvidia-wfb.so.169.12
libshadowfb.so
libwfb.so -> libnvidia-wfb.so.1
libwfb.so.orig

I tried installing the new NVIDIA 173.14.09 driver and I'm stil* seeting this problem. Tried using both the X.org libwfb.so and libnvidia-wfb.so.173.14.09 -- same problem with both.

Behavior is very frequent. Screenshots attached. Any suggestions as to what I can do to fix this or workaround the bug?

I can confirm the earlier comments that:
 - Scrambled text and/or pink backgrounds occur when the app triggers a titlebar change
 - The problem occurs very frequently with Eclipse in particular

[sirianni (eric-sirianni)]

I can confirm Datadog's post that downgrading to 169.04 fixes this problem.

[Seth (bugs-sehe)]

I have the same problems a little while now.

2008-07-11 09:34:03 status installed nvidia-glx-new 169.12+2.6.24.13-19.45
Linux sehe-desktop 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Jun 18 14:43:41 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

using compiz-fusion(emerald).

Garbled title bar on thunderbird every odd character (sometimes after intial 7 but then every (other) character).
Moving the mouse to the upper right corner (containing the titlebar window buttons) causes these to jitter back and forth (copies being drawn in different locations at a certain (about 4 times a second).
Using compiz in cube mode: leaving konsole (kde's console app) open on one virtual desktop, switching to another and then back, shows konsole output corrupted (as if only OR blits had ever been done: a superposition of all characters scrolled). I need to resize the konsole window to 'clear' the window buffer (moving it around, even to another virtual desktop doesn't help).

I'm very willing to try downgrading to 169.04, but I don't know how? Anyone have a tutorial/steps?

[Simone Tolotti (simontol)]

I can confirm the same happening in Intrepid kernel 2.6.27-4 nvidia drivers 177.76, compiz 0.7.7+git20080807

[maximus3d (maximus3d)]

Have similar problem with compiz, nvidia-glx and all latest updates on Dell Inspiron laptop:

Moving mouse over the maximize/minimize/close icons breaks/restores all title bar.

Changing theme Window Border to another style (clearlooks for instance) resolves problem for some of the applications windows, but some, like OpenOffice, title bars remain broken.

[Chandru (chandru-in-deactivatedaccount)]

I face similar problem in Intrepid too.

[Darren Thiessen (pilotman)]

Same issues here as well. All applications. Just like maximus3d said, moving the mouse over the buttons breaks/restores the title bar.

Intrepid with 2.6.27-10-generic

Nvidia 177.82 with a GeForce 6200

compiz 0.7.8

[Datadog (pkutzner)]

It appears that nVidia driver 180.22 fixes this problem. Here's one of the bullet-points from their changelog for this driver version:

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

They should probably change that "could" to a "would", as it seemed that it was pretty much a guarantee that it would corrupt window decorations. Anyhow, good to see that it appears to finally be fixed. Hopefully they won't re-introduce the regression again in a future release, and if they do, hopefully it won't take so many versions before it's finally fixed again.

[Shaw Terwilliger (sterwill)]

Nvidia 180 fixes it for me on both Intrepid and Jaunty (as of 2009-04-09).

[Seth (bugs-sehe)]

Nvidia 180 fixes it for me on both Intrepid and Jaunty (as of 2009-04-09).

Thanks fr updating this for intrepid with jaunty coming along !

[bugbot (bugbot)]

Thank you for reporting this issue about a driver from the
linux-restricted-modules package. lrm-2.4.24 was shipped with Ubuntu
8.04 which reached end-of-life for desktop support on May 12th, 2011.

For that reason, this bug report is being closed at this time. I'm
marking it wontfix because what you describe is probably a valid issue,
but there are no plans to work on lrm 2.4.24 bugs further.

The issue may be resolved in a newer version. If not, aside from filing
a new bug report, another angle may be to file it directly with the
driver vendor.