[i945gme] X freezes and blank screens - Jaunty DRI2/UXA/GEM (UXA bug)

[Alynna]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-intel

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu jaunty (development branch)
Release: 9.04
Codename: jaunty

Updates current as of 2009-03-15 14:30 PDT

Several bugs have been observed. This has been tested with both the current release and the PPA xorg-edgers packages:
These bugs crop up when DRI2 and UXA are ON.
They all still occur when UXA is on but DRI2 is not.
They ALL go away when EXA is used, EXA seems to remain completely stable.

1) Every 30 seconds to 3 minutes, the screen flickers, and usually recovers.
2) Eventually the screen will go blank but not turn off (a black screen). This is irrecoverable, even with a restart of X, X will start with a blank screen. The system must be rebooted to be able to use X again. Restarting X, up to and including removing the i915 and drm modules from the kernel, do not recover the display hardware. X still responds to keyboard and mouse events in this state, there is simply no display.
3) 3D applications can freeze X. Typically the mouse still works but the display (excepting the mouse) stops updating, including the clock.
4) When switching to a text console (ctrl-alt-F1) and then returning to the X server (alt-f7), the return to the X server will fail, with the same blank screen as in (2). X is effectively lost. However restarting X still works in this situation, unlike in (2) which requires a reboot.
5) Significantly lower performance in GL applications: Both Second Life and glxgears experience a loss of performance in UXA/DRI2 of about 50%. HOWEVER 2D performance in UXA/DRI2 seems to be about twice as fast.

These bugs were experienced in BOTH of the versions listed below and may stem to related xorg packages. In both testing scenarios, the packages from both the official development branch, and the PPA xorg-edgers, were all used together (anotherwords all of the non-PPA packages, then using all of the provided PPA packages). No observable difference was detected.

xserver-xorg-video-intel:
  Installed: 2:2.6.99.1+git20090312.dc3ff0b5-0ubuntu0tormod
  Candidate: 2:2.6.99.1+git20090312.dc3ff0b5-0ubuntu0tormod
  Version table:
 *** 2:2.6.99.1+git20090312.dc3ff0b5-0ubuntu0tormod 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:2.6.1-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages

I am currently using the xorg-edgers packages in EXA/DRI1 mode, as they are as stable as what is in the main repository from all appearances.

The system is an Acer Aspire One ZG5. A dump of lspci -vv and Xorg.0.log is attached.

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
     Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 015b
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
     Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device 015b

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

What does this return?

glxinfo | grep GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap

[Alynna (alynna)]

Bryce Harrington wrote:
> What does this return?
>
> glxinfo | grep GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - Jaunty DRI2/UXA/GEM (UXA bug)
> + X freezes and blank screens - Jaunty DRI2/UXA/GEM (UXA bug)
>
>
should I do this going back into UXA mode, or is it good from EXA?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We have a PPA with some new tools for debugging X freezes:

  https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-freeze-test

I know how irritating X freezes can be. They're also typically
quite hard to debug, but the information provided by these new
tools should help upstream figure them out.

You can help by doing the following:

 A. Install the PPA packages on Jaunty and boot kernel 2.6.30-rc2
 B. Reproduce your freeze
 C. ssh into the machine and run the steps to collect the info
 D. Attach the tarball of the results to this bug report

With this information, we'll be able to forward your bug upstream.

(For more information on triaging X freeze bugs, see
 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/Freeze )

[Sam Lin (itrs-lin)]

check xf86-video-intel 2.7.1
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2009-May/045585.html

"We have verified that several of the reported bugs of GPU crashes,
(mouse continues to move, but otherwise X is totally unresponsive), are
fixed with the commit by Keith Packard in 2.7.1 to correct the
computation of the batch space required. If you have previously reported
a GPU-crash bug in bugs.freedesktop.org, please test with 2.7.1 and
report your findings in the bug. If the crash is fixed, please celebrate
with us!
"