[i945] Screen goes unresponsive on Intel 945 Chipset

[John Lima]

I have a Intel 945 Chipset with an Atom 330 running an updated Karmic x64 beta. In earlier versions of Karmic, the display would freeze within a minute of login. After updates, it now will usually not freeze if computer is left idle immediately after login. Freezes mostly commonly during application launch, but still on occasion after the app is launched. Once it has frozen, I am still able to SSH in.

Runs perfectly fine in Failsafe Gnome.

My other desktop running Karmic with a nvidia graphics card has never had such a problem, and Jaunty works just fine on this one, so I suspect it has something to do with Karmic's new Intel graphics drivers.

I'm new to bug reporting, so I apologize if I missed any duplicates of this bug.

Description: Ubuntu karmic (development branch)
Release: 9.10

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub [8086:2770] (rev 02)
     Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:0d4b]
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2772] (rev 02)
     Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:0d4b]

[arky (arky)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi atten-dev,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` and `dmesg`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you're using a custom /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.]

[Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr)]

Sorry that it has taken so long to get back to you.

We have had several reports of freezes (GPU hangs) on i945 chipsets
(945G, 945GM and 945GME, all of which uses the GMA950 graphics core)
in Karmic. I would like to get some testing going so that we may
identify the cause and give upstream all the information they need
(and possibly some they do not need) so that they can fix this before
Lucid is out. I have set up a wiki page to coordinate the effort:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Lucidi945Freezes . There is a list of test
that I think will be useful in order to isolate where the problem is
and a table where you can fill in your test results. If we're lucky
there is only one underlying problem, and we will probably get
consistent test results. Otherwise, different test results may group
the problems in different categories.

I realize that doing all the tests can be quite time consuming (it
calls for tests on both Karmic and Lucid), and if you are only able to
do some of the tests it would be nice if you could fill in those cells
in the test result table.

My initial guess is that the bug is in mesa, since it seems to be
related to 3D operations. It would be nice if we could also get some
testing of different mesa versions, but I'm not aware of any that are
pre-built yet.

[Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr)]

I have uploaded an older version of mesa to my "old" PPA: https://launchpad.net/~gomyhr/+archive/old/+packages . By testing this, we can find out if this is caused by a bug in mesa which is introduced after version 7.5.

Unfortunately, installing it is probably not as easy as just adding the PPA to /etc/apt/sources and do `sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade`, since the version in the PPA is older than then one in karmic and I didn't do any PPA magic to make it want to upgrade anyway. The easiest way I can think about is probably to download all the deb-files for your architecture (*i386.deb) to an empty folder and do a `dpkg -i -O *.deb` in that folder. That will install only the packages that already have an installed version on your system.

If Karmic freezes with this version, I can try to go all the way back to the Jaunty version.

PS: I don't have a Karmic installation (I only have Jaunty and Lucid) so I haven't had a chance to test that the packages even work.

[Phương Võ (clarious)]

Reinstalling old version of mesa solved the problem for me :) Thank.

[Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr)]

I have uploaded a newer version of mesa to my PPA (https://launchpad.net/~gomyhr/+archive/old/+packages). Whether this freezes or not will provide a good starting point for a git-bisect in order to find a bad commit.

There is a tutorial for bisecting mesa at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/BisectingMesa and a more detailed account at http://tuxpool.blogspot.com/2009/12/bisecting-mesa-bug-446632.html . Both web pages have ATI chipsets, so instead of r100, r200 and radeon drivers, i915 is probably the right driver for 945G chipsets.

It would also be useful if those that are affected by this bug could test Lucid to verify that the bug stil exist there (that is where it can potentially be fixed). With Lucid, we would also appreciate a batchbuffer dump. There are instructions for how to get that at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/Freeze .

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[This is an automatic notification.]

Thanks for reporting this bug to help making the Intel graphics driver
better. We hear from upstream that a number of bugs (possibly including
this one) have been fixed in the newer DRM code from the 2.6.33 kernel.
I don't know if your bug is one of the ones fixed in this release,
though, but we've prepared a PPA with this DRM update. Would you mind
installing this, rebooting, and testing if the original issue can be
reproduced with it or not?

The DRM PPA is here:

    https://edge.launchpad.net/~apw/+archive/red

Note there could be new bugs... please file these as new reports using
the command 'ubuntu-bug linux' (for kernel or DRM or KMS bugs) or
'ubuntu-bug xorg' if you suspect them to be X.org issues.

[mtb-cliff (pagedynamix)]

Hi Bryce, an error was generated when I tried using Update manager after
adding in the PPA.

Bryce Harrington wrote:
> [This is an automatic notification.]
>
> Thanks for reporting this bug to help making the Intel graphics driver
> better. We hear from upstream that a number of bugs (possibly including
> this one) have been fixed in the newer DRM code from the 2.6.33 kernel.
> I don't know if your bug is one of the ones fixed in this release,
> though, but we've prepared a PPA with this DRM update. Would you mind
> installing this, rebooting, and testing if the original issue can be
> reproduced with it or not?
>
> The DRM PPA is here:
>
> https://edge.launchpad.net/~apw/+archive/red
>
> Note there could be new bugs... please file these as new reports using
> the command 'ubuntu-bug linux' (for kernel or DRM or KMS bugs) or
> 'ubuntu-bug xorg' if you suspect them to be X.org issues.
>
>
> ** Changed in: xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu)
> Status: Confirmed => Incomplete
>
>

[Patrick Craenen (bootpanic)]

I'm experiencing the same problem with both Karmic and Lucid

My hardware is a MSI mainboard MS-7536 with an Intel 945G/GZ Integrated Graphics chip.

The screen freezes after a short while, sometimes even before the desktop is loaded...
Mouse pointer was every time unmovable/unusable.
Keyboard unusable but system reacts to Alt-SysRq reisub...
The machine stays reachable over SSH.
Resetting the X server does not revive the display.

If i can be of any assistance please let me know.

[Patrick Craenen (bootpanic)]

I found that turning off visual effects "System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual effects" makes the crashes go away.
No crash anymore in 3 days.
Could this bug be the same as bug #475429 ?