[i845] X crash

[Argyle]

ubuntu splash screen shows, goes dark, shows, goes dark, etc,... Over and over again. The only way I can get gdm up is to <ctrl><alt>Fx to a different console and then back. Also, the text consoles don't work.

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE/PE DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface [8086:2560] (rev 03)
     Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:5770]
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device [8086:2562] (rev 03)
     Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:5778]

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

Computer is a Compaq Presario desktop SR1010NX. MotherBoard is MS-6577 Ver 4.1. I'm getting alot of X crashes and flaky video. Please let me know if I can provide further information. Thanks for looking into this!

[Ludwin Janvier (lud-janvier)]

Could you rename your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and let Xorg autodetect your display and video card ?

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

I have done so, but the problem persists.

The reason I had an xorg.conf file at all is because I ran the command, "Xorg -configure" in the hope that it would help resolve this problem and because the line "(EE) Failed to load module "i810" (module does not exist, 0)" appeared in /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

I will post the most recent /var/log/gdm/:0.log and /var/log/gdm/:0.log.1 so that you can see the difference between the pass and fail. Note, the pass (:0.log) only occurs once I've switched to a different console before the spash screen goes dark.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi kruegejj,

Thanks for including the attached files. Could you also include your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (or Xorg.0.log.old) from after reproducing the issue?

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

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

I will include my Xorg.0.log and Xorg.0.log.old, but are these the appropriate files for this issue? I was under the impression that gdm had its own set of log files (/var/log/gdm) and separate x invocation.

Also, I'm not sure if I have one, two, three, or four related issues here. I will enumerate as best I can what I am seeing to make things clearer:

1) The gdm crash restart loop: The animated "Ubuntu" splash screen (via xsplash, I think) comes up, spins for a few seconds, makes the bongo startup sound, goes dark for a moment, and then the process repeats, indefinitely. Something like the following appears in /var/log/syslog during this time:

Nov 3 11:29:22 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2550]: WARNING: Child process -2586 was already dead.
Nov 3 11:29:22 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2550]: WARNING: Unable to kill D-Bus daemon
Nov 3 11:29:32 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2625]: WARNING: Child process -2661 was already dead.
Nov 3 11:29:32 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2625]: WARNING: Unable to kill D-Bus daemon
Nov 3 11:29:43 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2694]: WARNING: Child process -2729 was already dead.
Nov 3 11:29:43 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2694]: WARNING: Unable to kill D-Bus daemon
Nov 3 11:29:53 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2764]: WARNING: Child process -2800 was already dead.
Nov 3 11:29:53 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2764]: WARNING: Unable to kill D-Bus daemon
Nov 3 11:30:03 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2834]: WARNING: Child process -2870 was already dead.
Nov 3 11:30:03 exachron gdm-simple-slave[2834]: WARNING: Unable to kill D-Bus daemon

If I use <ctrl> <alt> F1 while on the splash screen, wait a few moments, and then <ctrl> <alt> F7 (or sometime F8 or F9, I think), I am then presented with the login screen and can log into my gnome session from there.

2) The video does not work in the text consoles (i.e. blank screens), but the login still works. I tested this by switching to a text console (<ctrl> <alt> F1) while logged into my gnome session, blindly typing my username and password, and then 'touch'ing a non-existent file. I then switched back to my gnome session (<ctrl> <alt> F7) and verified that the new file exists. A further observation is that if I switch to a text console immediately upon startup (after booting) before gdm is given a chance to crash even once, the text console video works and continues to do so even after I've logged in.

3) X crashes intermittently when I am performing certain actions in my gnome session. Changing the desktop background will often crash it (but not always) and browsing certain webpages in firefox will crash it. This dumps me back into the gdm restart loop, except that, about 1/2 the time, the video has become so corrupted (i.e. I move the mouse and the screen swims around) that I can no longer recover and have to reboot.

4) If I switch to a text console and switch back to gnome, the screen fonts & font colors are corrupted (I'll attach a <Print Screen>). The corruption goes away after a redraw.

Three more observations:

1) Any action of switching between, moving or resizing windows takes an inordinate amount of time, during which the Xorg process occupies a large %CPU (accordi...

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Actually there are two bugs here - one is the splash screen and X crash, the other is the gdm restart loop. The latter is bug #441638 and is in progress. Let's ignore that and focus on the underlying issue of why X crashed to begin with.

Unfortunately, the gdm bug is going to make it difficult for you to diagnose the problem, so you may want to simply shut it off (/etc/init.d/gdm stop) and then start X from the console using 'startx'. In any case, what we need you to collect is a full backtrace. Guidance on how to collect full backtraces is available at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Backtracing/. Thanks ahead of time.

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

I've stopped gdm as advised above, though "/etc/init.d/gdm stop" advised me to use "stop gdm" instead. I've started X using startx from the console, which seems to work fine, but doesn't go through any of the xsplash stuff and doesn't crash. Should I be attempting to get a backtrace on starting gdm, or should I be getting a backtrace on making X crash by changing my desktop background?

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

Also, it appears I'm going to have to do the backtrace the hard way as I can't get the apport service to start on my machine. I also can't figure out why it won't start. There doesn't seem to be anything pertinent in the logs other than:

Nov 4 13:02:30 exachron init: apport pre-start process (2168) terminated with status 1
Nov 4 13:02:30 exachron init: apport post-stop process (2169) terminated with status 1

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

Okay, I think I did it. I install these packages:

sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-core-dbg
sudo aptitude install libgl1-mesa-dri-dbg
sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-intel-dbg
sudo aptitude install libdrm-intel1-dbg

Then I ran gdb as described, caused the session to crash by selecting "Change Desktop Background", and obtained the backtrace as posted in the attached file.

Please let me know if this isn't what you were looking for.

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

I'm not sure if this is related, but it might be. I decided to install 9.10 on another partition so that I had something to experiment with. During the installation process, once the live install cd starts, an Xorg crash is reported in the notification area. I recall this happening the first time I installed, but I didn't have a net connection at the time. In this case, it looks like apport is activated and it collects a great deal of information about the crash and my hardware. If that information is pertinent to this bug, you'll find it in bug #474904. I hope this helps.

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

I also have an Xorg.0.log file from Ubuntu 8.04 running on the same hardware (linux partition #3), which seems to work a lot better (stable, fast, though compiz won't start). I don't know if a comparative analysis will help, but I've attached it just in case.

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

Is there any further information I can provide to help with this process? Is something still missing? Is there any way to work around this by using the drivers from 8.04 rather than the new ones? My system is barely usable as a desktop as it stands (slow, unstable). I apologise if I seem impatient. I am new to the bug reporting process and I'm not yet familiar with how it works temporally. Thank you for your help.

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

For now, I have restored usability to my system by downgrading the xserver-xorg-video-intel package to a jaunty version. I used the following method:

1) Downloaded: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/27624866/xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3_i386.deb
2) sudo dpkg -i xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3_i386.deb
3) sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-intel=2:2.6.3-0ubuntu9.3
4) echo "xserver-xorg-video-intel hold" | sudo dpkg --set-selections
5) Verified hold by issuing: apt-get -s upgrade

(Source: http://tech.akom.net/archives/45-Upgrading-to-Ubuntu-9.10-Karmic-Koala-breaks-X-xorg-on-intel-driver-on-945G-chipset.html)

I was able to re-enable gdm, my text consoles work now, the font corruption has gone away, the crashes from changing the desktop background are gone and the 10 second delays seen when switching between windows are gone. I still don't have dri, but I do have a usable desktop now.

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

Is there something more I can provide to help move this from Status->Incomplete?

[Argyle (kruegejj)]

Today, 12/10/2009, I updated my Karmic test system to the most recent versions of all software, including X and the kernel. During this process, I released all holds on the jaunty version of xserver-xorg-video-intel. I am sad to report that gdm remained in the restart loop (despite the fact that I thought I saw a changelog indicating that this problem was fixed). Once I broke out of the gdm service and started x from the console, x seemed to function okay, except that I'm still getting errors with the DRM device. These error persisted even after I added the xswat x updates to my software sources. For my main system, for now, I must remain with the hold, using the jaunty version of xserver-xorg-video-intel. Please let me know if I can provide further information.

[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.

[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.