[Xpress 1250] Intermittant unwanted redaction when selecting text

[MattBlack]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

When selecting text in Firefox, occasionally (1 in 100 times maybe) a portion of a text will appear as a black box instead of highlighted black text on orange background. The effect is like CIA black pen redaction of sensitive documents. If the text is deselected by clicking and reselected, it will work okay again. It doesn't seem to happen with any specific sites, but I've seen it on both slashdot and reddit.

I have firefox 3.0.9. I have recently upgraded automatically to Ubuntu 9.04 and switched to the free ATI drivers. This never happened before I upgraded. I have an Intel Core 2 Duo R20 laptop with 2 gb memory.

*Edit - hitting printscreen clears the black bars, so I can't give a screenshot!

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Xpress 7930 Host Bridge [1002:7930]
     Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c511]
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Xpress 1250 [1002:7942]
     Subsystem: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Device [144d:c511]

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i would guess this is a ati driver bug; any change to test vesa or fglrx to check whether this is really confined to the free ati driver?

[MattBlack (oli-ellis)]

Thanks for your reply.

My xorg.conf lists

Section "Device"
 Identifier "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
 BusID "PCI:1:5:0"
 Driver "ati"
EndSection

I am not sure how Ubuntu manages the X server config any more (the last time I edited an X config file was in Slackware 9 or so). Is it just a matter of changing 'ati' to 'vesa'?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi oli-ellis,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[MattBlack (oli-ellis)]

Have uploaded what you requested.

Also, it has just happened once in dark brown! Looked like someone had used a brown highlighter over a line in Reddit. It disappeared when firefox lost focus (when I pressed prtscrn). Note that this is distinct from when things are selected normally in firefox, which is a light orange that doesn't disappear when firefox loses focus.

I'm happy to do any tests you might require.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automatic notification.]

A new version of the -ati driver is now available in Karmic.

This is a significant update to -ati which brings in kernel mode-setting
(currently disabled) and scores of fixes for DRI2, EXA, etc.

I've posted the new version of this driver to the following PPA,
would you mind testing it and seeing if it resolves the bug you
reported?

  https://edge.launchpad.net/~bryceharrington/+archive/ppa/+sourcepub/709908/+listing-archive-extra

If you're not running this release of Ubuntu, you can try booting the Karmic
LiveCD and loading the PPA onto it, and then log out/in to restart X.
ISOs are available at http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/

After testing Karmic, report back here whether it's still an issue or not,
and if it is please post a fresh Xorg.0.log and 'dmesg' output.

Note there could be new bugs... please file these as new reports using
the command 'ubuntu-bug xorg'.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.