[Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller] Display sluggish, black background and repeated windows drawn when external monitor is connected

[Daniel Manrique]

This is on a freshly installed and dist-upgraded Natty installation.

Steps to reproduce:
- Plug in an external screen and wait a couple of seconds for it to get recognized.

Expected result:
- Both screens draw correctly and can be used

Actual result:
- The background goes "black" on both screens (whereas it should have the default Ubuntu colored background). Unity and the top panel are visible on the built-in display; Only the top panel is visible in the external display.

If I open a terminal on the main display, it appears fine, but response is very sluggish; the system takes up to 2 seconds to "catch up" with actions, keystrokes and dragging actions (the cursor pointer itself is fine and tracks movement without any lag).

If I drag a window around, other than it being very slow (takes up to 2 seconds to finally catch up with the dragging pointer), it leaves "traces" of itself around, as if the intermediate steps were not being erased before redrawing the window in a new position. This happens in either display.

When I unplug the external display, everything goes back to normal.

I'm attaching pictures of the internal and external screen upon connecting the external display, of both screens after I've dragged a window around a bit and left a lot of residual window pieces, and how the internal display looks after unplugging the external display (i.e. normal).

Happens on these five systems:
- Three Dell Latitude 2110, slightly different specs
- One Dell Inspiron Mini 1018
- One Asus Eee PC 1001PX

The common component seems to be this one:

Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller

ProblemType: BugDistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: xorg 1:7.6+4ubuntu3.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: compiz
Date: Thu Jul 7 14:47:06 2011
DistUpgraded: Fresh installDistroCodename: natty
DistroVariant: ubuntu
GraphicsCard:
 Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:a011] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0461]
   Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0461]InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude 2110
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic root=UUID=4ae16a11-2a60-4714-9532-620f4a0c685b ro quiet splash initcall_debug vt.handoff=7
Renderer: UnknownSourcePackage: xorg
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 01/25/2010
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: X06
dmi.board.name: MOE3C3
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrX06:bd01/25/2010:svnDellInc.:pnLatitude2110:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rnMOE3C3:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Latitude 2110
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.4+bzr20110606-0ubuntu1~natty2
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+4ubuntu3.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.0-0ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.14.0-4ubuntu7.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20110107+b795ca6e-0ubuntu7

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

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[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

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Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
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[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

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[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Tested with Oneiric image from July 5th on the Dell 2110. Upon connecting external display, the external goes black as in picture 2. The internal display gets a "ghost" copy of the top panel, about 2/3 of the way down the screen. from that point up until the actual top panel, everything is black. From the ghost panel down to the bottom 1/3 of the screen, residual images of the apps that are there can be seen. However, apps themselves are not visible in the top part, and the visible parts in the bottom of the screen don't refresh or update. The cursor pointer is "alive", I can move it and it even responds to what's "underneath" (i.e. changes shape to signify a draggable border, a text area, and so forth) but even if I'm manipulating stuff, I can't see anything as the screen is not getting redrawn.

To be fair, I haven't tested Oneiric on a system that used to work fine in Natty, but still, the faulty behavior seems to still be there in a similar way.
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[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Here's some more diagnostics:

I tried this with Ubuntu Maverick. The primary display remains functional and shows everything correctly with no sluggishness, but the secondary display, upon plugging in, appears to have a width of only one pixel; that is, if I move my cursor to the secondary display, I do see about half of the cursor on the very left edge of the secondary display, and it doesn't go any farther than that. I obviously can't drag any windows to that display (they seem to hit the "edge" and don't go through.

the secondary display is an Acer VGA monitor capable of 1280x1024, and X tries to use this maximum resolution when plugging it in.

I then went and changed the resolution of the secondary display to 1024x768. Lo and behold, now it works! a 1024x768 area of the monitor is visible and I can drag windows and use it just fine, with no sluggishness, *but* the part of the monitor outside this area is black (i.e. it's not "scaling" things to the monitor's full size).

I went back to one of the Natty systems and tried changing the resolution. The primary display has native resolution of 1024x600. If the secondary display is at 1280x1024 or 1024x768, I get sluggishness and display corruption as described above. BUT if I resize the secondary to 800x600, then the background displays OK, no sluggishness and everything works very well. Under Natty, the display correctly scales to fill up the entire screen.

I tried another panel, a Dell capable of 1680x1200. Same results, for any resolution of 1024x768 or higher, the display is corrupted and pretty much unusable, and system is sluggish. For 800x600 and lower, everything works fine.

Hopefully this information will be helpful. Behavior in Maverick is a bit better but still not OK, so I won't mark this bug as a regression since it looks like the problem has been present for a while on this graphics chipset.

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[Ara Pulido (ara)]

Chris, this is blocking certification in some enablement systems. Can you have a look, please?

[Ara Pulido (ara)]

Adding a Natty task to track the SRU to Natty

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

Just tested these systems with the 2.6.38-11 kernel from -proposed, they still have the same behavior as originally described.

Again, if I bring the external display's resolution down to 800x600 (640x480 on one system as nothing higher will work), both displays look/work fine and performance is good with no sluggishness. But with the default optimum resolution on the external panel it has sluggishness and corrupted display.