screen flickering on dell laptop

[Aurelien Naldi]

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-intel

it seems similar to bug #399829 which appears at each frequency but 85Hz.
In this case, none of the listed frequency fixes the problem.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Aug 7 16:17:37 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude D520
Package: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.8.0-0ubuntu2
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-5-generic root=UUID=e6da9118-b864-4516-bef3-6da89fc48868 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-5.24-generic
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.4+3ubuntu5
 libgl1-mesa-glx 7.5-1ubuntu1
 libdrm2 2.4.12-1ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.8.0-0ubuntu2
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.12.99+git20090629.f39cafc5-0ubuntu5
SourcePackage: xserver-xorg-video-intel
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-5-generic i686
dmi.bios.date: 04/02/2007
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A05
dmi.board.name: 0NF743
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA05:bd04/02/2007:svnDellInc.:pnLatitudeD520:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0NF743:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Latitude D520
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
fglrx: Not loaded
system:
 distro: Ubuntu
 architecture: i686kernel: 2.6.31-5-generic

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi Aurelien Naldi,
Hmm... I'm not sure I totally understand your description of the problem. Could you please elaborate and clarify?

Please write the description independent of reference to bug #399829 because I'm uncertain in what ways your bug is similar to and different.

[Aurelien Naldi (aurelien.naldi)]

It seems to have been a problem with the in-kernel part of the driver and KMS, fixed in the latest kernel update (2.6.31-6):
* I spotted some flicker in usplash and text console as well
* booting without KMS removed it
* it is gone, even with KMS enabled in 2.6.31-6 (and back if booting again on 2.6.31-5, it was not fixed by one of the other updates)

For the record, here is a short answer to your question:

The symptoms are similar to that of bug #399829:
many redraw trigger screen flickering, for exemple moving windows of the gdm animations, even text scrolling in a terminal
the only difference is that changing the resolution did not work arround it for me, otherwise, the flickering looked like the one in the video linked in bug #399829.