Video corruption with Visual Effects set to Normal

[Peter van der Spoel]

On a brand new system I installed the Jaunty Beta. Installation went without a hitch.

I've noticed though that display corruption appears after a certain while, mainly on the shadow that compiz makes around all windows.

I'll attach Xorg.o.log, dmesg and the output from 'lspci -vvnn', but I'm highlighting here some relevant items:

lspci -vvnn
---------------
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2e12] (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:3036]
 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 2295
 Region 0: Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Region 2: Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 Region 4: I/O ports at 1230 [size=8]
 Capabilities: [90] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable+
  Address: fee0300c Data: 41c1
 Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
  Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
  Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

Xorg.o.log
--------------
(WW) intel(0): libpciaccess reported 0 rom size, guessing 64kB
(WW) intel(0): Register 0x61110 (PORT_HOTPLUG_EN) changed from 0x10000120 to 0x38000020
(WW) intel(0): Register 0x61114 (PORT_HOTPLUG_STAT) changed from 0x00000b00 to 0x20400b00
(WW) intel(0): DRI2 requires UXA

dmesg
---------
[ 0.863640] pci 0000:00:02.0: Boot video device
[ 0.863768] ACPI Warning (nseval-0168): Insufficient arguments - method [_OSC] needs 5, found 4 [20080926]
[ 0.863841] ACPI Error (dsfield-0139): [CAPD] Namespace lookup failure, AE_ALREADY_EXISTS
[ 0.863845] ACPI Error (psparse-0524): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0._OSC] (Node f6c15eb8), AE_ALREADY_EXISTS
[ 0.863850] ACPI: Marking method _OSC as Serialized because of AE_ALREADY_EXISTS error
[ 0.864380] ACPI Warning (nseval-0168): Insufficient arguments - method [_OSC] needs 5, found 4 [20080926]
[ 0.864433] ACPI Error (dsfield-0139): [CAPD] Namespace lookup failure, AE_ALREADY_EXISTS
[ 0.864436] ACPI Error (psparse-0524): Method parse/execution failed [\_SB_.PCI0._OSC] (Node f6c15eb8), AE_ALREADY_EXISTS

[Peter van der Spoel (peter-vanderspoel-gmail)]

I've also attached a screenshot showing the extend of the corruption I'm seeing intermittendly. The Terminal window on the right that is very much corrupted, fixed itself with a repaint shortly after I clicked on the title to give it the focus.

[Hew (hew)]

Thanks for your report. Does the problem also occur when using metacity (desktop effects = none), or only with compiz? If it is a compiz issue only, can you try and isolate which plugin is causing the issue? You can do this using compizconfig-settings-manager.

[Peter van der Spoel (peter-vanderspoel-gmail)]

It only occurs when desktop effects are active. Under metacity I do not see corruption. I've tried the last several weeks to disable the various plugins in compiz with limited success.

I first thought it was solved by disabling the 'Animations' plugin, and for a while the corruption disappeared, then it came back.

The most corruption is shown in the shadow effect on the windows, so my next thought was to disable the 'Window Decoration'. Well that proved to be usefull... :-) I had to turn it back on again otherwise I could not normally use the system.

I've tried others as well, but corruption persisted.

[Hew (hew)]

Thanks for testing, confirming based on the information provided.

[Petrushka (peter-gainsford+launchpad)]

I am frequently getting the same style of graphical corruption (output of lspci -vvnn is attached): corruption of window contents and of window shadows, as reported by Peter van der Spoel, and also corruption of GNOME panels at top and bottom of screen.

Also like him, the corruption sometimes vanishes when giving a window focus or when opening/closing a window in the same application (getting rid of corruption in panels is harder).

There are some screenshots posted in Bug #362919 by frednet, piksi, and nameiner (the 4th, 5th, and 8th attachments in that bug), which look very similar either to Peter van der Spoel's screenshot or to the corruption I've experienced.

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 362919, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.