Half of emacs window missing

[Peter Watkins]

Binary package hint: emacs23

In emacs 23.1+1-4ubuntu7 under Ubuntu 10.10, only half the window contents is displayed. The problem is intermittent. The attached screenshot shows what I'm talking about--only half the scratch text is displayed.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: emacs23 23.1+1-4ubuntu7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.41-generic 2.6.35.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Dec 13 09:16:37 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/csh
SourcePackage: emacs23

[era (era)]

Please add information about which display driver you are using. If you are uncertain how exactly to find out, attaching a copy of your /var/log/Xorg.0.log is a good (albeit rather overkill) approximation.

I have changed the Status of this bug report to Incomplete to mark it as pending on further input from you. Please feel free to change it back to New once you have supplied the requested information. Thanks!

[era (era)]

Do emacs23-lucid or emacs22 work better? Using emacs23-lucid might be an acceptable workaround, although you lose all the Gnome look&feel integration offered by the GTK version of Emacs.

[Peter Watkins (peter-watkins)]

Hi Era,

I think I'm using the Nouveau driver:
From /var/log/Xorg.0.log:
[ 26.100] (II) LoadModule: "nouveau"
[ 26.101] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nouveau_drv.so
[ 26.108] (II) Module nouveau: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 26.108] compiled for 1.8.99.905, module version = 0.0.16
[ 26.108] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 26.108] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 8.0
[ 26.120] (II) LoadModule: "nv"
[ 26.121] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/nv_drv.so
[ 26.133] (II) Module nv: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 26.133] compiled for 1.8.99.905, module version = 2.1.17
[ 26.133] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 26.133] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 8.0
[ 26.133] (II) LoadModule: "vesa"
[ 26.134] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/vesa_drv.so
[ 26.141] (II) Module vesa: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 26.141] compiled for 1.8.99.905, module version = 2.3.0
[ 26.141] Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[ 26.141] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 8.0
[ 26.141] (II) LoadModule: "fbdev"
[ 26.142] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/fbdev_drv.so
[ 26.150] (II) Module fbdev: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[ 26.150] compiled for 1.8.99.905, module version = 0.4.2
[ 26.150] ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 8.0
[ 26.150] (II) NOUVEAU driver Date: Thu Aug 5 00:40:40 2010 +0200
[ 26.150] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[ 26.150] RIVA TNT (NV04)
[ 26.150] RIVA TNT2 (NV05)
[ 26.150] GeForce 256 (NV10)
[ 26.150] GeForce 2 (NV11, NV15)
[ 26.150] GeForce 4MX (NV17, NV18)
[ 26.150] GeForce 3 (NV20)
[ 26.150] GeForce 4Ti (NV25, NV28)
[ 26.150] GeForce FX (NV3x)
[ 26.150] GeForce 6 (NV4x)
[ 26.151] GeForce 7 (G7x)
[ 26.151] GeForce 8 (G8x)
[ 26.151] (II) NOUVEAU driver Date: Thu Aug 5 00:40:40 2010 +0200
[ 26.151] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[ 26.151] RIVA TNT (NV04)
[ 26.151] RIVA TNT2 (NV05)
[ 26.151] GeForce 256 (NV10)
[ 26.151] GeForce 2 (NV11, NV15)
[ 26.151] GeForce 4MX (NV17, NV18)
[ 26.151] GeForce 3 (NV20)
[ 26.151] GeForce 4Ti (NV25, NV28)
[ 26.151] GeForce FX (NV3x)
[ 26.151] GeForce 6 (NV4x)
[ 26.151] GeForce 7 (G7x)
[ 26.151] GeForce 8 (G8x)
[ 26.151] (II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
[ 26.151] (II) FBDEV: driver for framebuffer: fbdev
[ 26.152] (++) using VT number 7

I tried emacs22. It doesn't have the problem. Presently I just run emacs on a RedHat machine and forward the X11 packets to my Ubuntu box as a workaround.

Thanks,

Peter

[era (era)]

Based on the previous comment, adding a task for xserver-xorg-video-nouveau. I expect we will be able to mark this as Invalid for emacs23.

Does switching to another driver (e.g. vesa or nv) help?

[Peter Watkins (peter-watkins)]

I haven't been able to switch to the VESA driver. When I make an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to do that, I get this error in my /var/log/Xorg.*.log:

[ 21.764] (EE) VESA: Kernel modesetting driver in use, refusing to load

However, I noticed the emacs problem doesn't seem to occur as the root user. So I deleted several .* files and directories (settings files and dirs) in my home directory. After I logged out and logged back in, I no longer have the emacs display problem. Unfortunately, I didn't delete them one at a time. I have a back up of them. I'll let you know if I find the one that caused a problem.

[bugbot (bugbot)]

Hey Peter,

Hi, have you had a chance to test if this bug is still present in natty?

If it does (and if you're the original reporter), please boot into natty
and run the command:

  apport-collect <bug-number>

which will update the bug with fresh logs and tag the bug as affecting
natty. (It is best to run this right after reproducing the problem.)

[bugbot (bugbot)]

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.