screen not rendering properly

[Daniel]

Binary package hint: xorg

This past friday, I rebooted by ubuntu system. It came up and I was able to log in, but the screen was not rendering properly. The unity menu on the right was basically invisible, the top menu bar was not rendering, the entire screen was hazy, and there were other artifacts on the screen that arent supposed to be there.

I suspected that the cause of the problem was caused by one of the xserver packages. I noted that xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common were updated that Wednesday from 2:1.10.1-1ubuntu1 to 2:1.10.1-1ubuntu1.1. I downgraded to the previous version of these two packages and rebooted. Same thing. Then I rebooted again and the problem seemed to have gone away. At this point, I was somewhat confident that I could resolve the problem if it happened again so I upgraded those two packages to there most recent version. The problem occured again, but this time downgrading didn't help, which was bizzare. I reinstalled ubuntu and then explicitly didn't allow the xserver-xorg-core and xserver-common packages to be upgraded. Everything was fine for the rest of the day but that evening, the display froze. I rebooted to recover and the problem came back.

I have reseated the graphics card but that didn't help. I also noted that I was able to use the "Ubuntu Safe Mode" session in GDM and the desktop looks fine. This leads me to believe it is a problem with the unity interface, or some 3d code that gets invoked when I'm running in normal mode.

So the specific sequence is:
- boot computer - things look fine on the screen
- gdm runs to collect login information, things look fine on the screen
- ubuntu desktop appears but rendered improperly. artifacts appear on the screen

I am filing this bug from safe mode so I'm not sure if the logs captured by it will have the relevant information. I do have Xorg.log from when I ran in normal mode and saw the problem and can attach that if necessary.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: xorg 1:7.6+4ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,decor,mousepoll,vpswitch,regex,animation,snap,expo,move,compiztoolbox,place,grid,imgpng,gnomecompat,wall,ezoom,workarounds,staticswitcher,resize,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,scale,session,unityshell]
CompositorRunning: None
DRM.card0.VGA.1:
 status: disconnected
 enabled: disabled
 dpms: On
 modes:
 edid-base64:
Date: Sun Jun 5 21:20:51 2011
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: natty
DistroVariant: ubuntu
GraphicsCard:
 ATI Technologies Inc RV370 5B60 [Radeon X300 (PCIE)] [1002:5b60] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc Device [1002:0602]
   Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc Device [1002:0603]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Dimension 9100
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=aa54c04b-e98b-4d38-9ba7-4a912cef6033 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
Renderer: Unknown
SourcePackage: xorg
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 05/25/2005
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A01
dmi.board.name: 0X8582
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 7
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA01:bd05/25/2005:svnDellInc.:pnDimension9100:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0X8582:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct7:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Dimension 9100
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.23-1ubuntu6
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 7.10.2-0ubuntu2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.10.2-0ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.6+4ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.0-0ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.14.0-4ubuntu7
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20110107+b795ca6e-0ubuntu7

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hey daniel-laflamme,

You filed this bug report against natty, but I see it's still open and
doesn't appear to have much activity recently. So, now that oneiric
is released and stable, this may be a good point for you to upgrade
and re-test if this issue is still present there.

If it's solved in the new release and you think it's worth backporting
the fix, please indicate that. Or if having the fix in the new release
is good enough, feel free to close out the bug (or let us know and we'll
close it.)

If it's not solved, leave the bug report open. I can't promise we'll
get to it (we get way more bugs filed than we can usually get to), but
your testing and feedback can help out if and when we do.

[Daniel (daniel-laflamme)]

This appears to have been fixed in oneiric. Thank you.