blank (white) desktop, no icons, no windows

[David Mitchell]

When I start a regular Ubuntu session, the left black/gray (launcher?) bar shows, but no icons. Mouse-over flashes 'tooltip' descriptions of what should be there, but otherwise nothing.

The top 'tray' bar shows with its proper icons.

The main desktop area is dead white. No display of anything except the pointer cursor.

With that situation, I can't even shut down Ubuntu properly, because even if I click "Shutdown" on the top bar (that dropdown menu displays okay), the next thing to be seen should be a dialog asking to confirm. It might be there - mouse-over causes some kind of cursor changes - but it's invisible. So I'm forced to completely reboot.

Under 2D, I called up the terminal and ran unity --reset. That caused the screen to blank out as above. I've also tried /usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p, but that simply says that there's no problem found.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: compiz 1:0.9.6+bzr20110929-0ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-14.23-generic 3.0.9
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-generic i686
.tmp.unity.support.test.0:

ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/screen0/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: None
Date: Sat Dec 10 17:01:27 2011
DistUpgraded: Log time: 2011-10-16 07:53:39.292661
DistroCodename: oneiric
DistroVariant: ubuntu
GraphicsCard:
 nVidia Corporation NV37GL [Quadro FX 330/GeForce PCX 5300] [10de:00fc] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device [1462:9681]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
MachineType: MEDIONPC MS-7046
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-14-generic root=UUID=038b1c8e-ea02-4e43-b619-3a2e3ed4fbdc ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: compiz
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-16 (55 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 08/31/2004
dmi.bios.vendor: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
dmi.bios.version: 6.00 PG
dmi.board.name: MS-7046
dmi.board.vendor: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnPhoenixTechnologies,LTD:bvr6.00PG:bd08/31/2004:svnMEDIONPC:pnMS-7046:pvr:rvnMICRO-STARINTERNATIONALCO.,LTD:rnMS-7046:rvr:cvn:ct3:cvr:
dmi.product.name: MS-7046
dmi.sys.vendor: MEDIONPC
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.6+bzr20110929-0ubuntu6
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.26-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 7.11-0ubuntu3
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.11-0ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.6+7ubuntu7
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.6.0-1ubuntu13
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.99~git20110811.g93fc084-0ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.15.901-1ubuntu2.1
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20110411+8378443-1

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Oliver R. (oliverr)]

I experience the same problem in a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS from CD. It persists after "sudo apt-get upgrade" (including kernel).

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

This appears to be an issue with Nouveau's support for Oliver's GeForce FX 5600 and David's Quadro FX 330.

[Adam Baker (p-launchpad-baker-net-org-uk)]

The above description is pretty much what I see when attempting to boot the release version of the 12.04 Live CD on my machine

graphics card is
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200 Ultra] (rev a1)
or as numbers
01:00.0 0300: 10de:0321 (rev a1)

[Oliver R. (oliverr)]

Interestingly, the Live CD did not show the bug in my case. It appeared after booting into the installed system. (And it disappeared after deinstalling xserver-xorg-video-nouveau).

[Benno (bpboersma)]

I upgraded from 11.10 and am having the same.

[Benno (bpboersma)]

Changing to Gnome Classic desktop before log in makes the old desktop visible again. Nautilus seems to be crashing though.

[Trent Tschirgi (mourka)]

I have experienced the 'white screeen of death' in 11.04 and 11.10.
I have blacklisted the 'nouveau' driver for nVidia, but still get white screens.
I get white screens with and without the noveau driver; with and without compiz.

To reproduce;
Open and close many windows (about 15 to 20), then open more than 3 windows at the same time.
Successive windows opened are blank.
It is sometimes possible to see content in them by resizing the windows to a smaller size. The more windows opened, the smaller the size has to be to get data to appear.
The white window appears often (but not always) after a period of inactivity, usually when I leave an application open and go do something else for a half hour or more.
If I type my password and hit [enter], the desktop returns , pretty reliably.

Rebooting the computer seems to reset the bug, then it pops up after 20 screens or so.

I am running Ubuntu 11.10, 32-bit, with an nVidia card ;

trent@Linux-Main-1:~$ sudo lshw -C video

  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: C73 [GeForce 7050 / nForce 610i]
       vendor: nVidia Corporation
       physical id: 10
       bus info: pci@0000:00:10.0
       version: a2
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 66MHz
       capabilities: pm msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:22 memory:fd000000-fdffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:fc000000-fcffffff memory:fea40000-fea5ffff
trent@Linux-Main-1:~$

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Could someone affected please upload a copy of .xsession-errors and .xsession-errors.old? Thanks.

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Also, something that one could attempt is running:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

and rebooting. Hopefully that would fix it but it very well may not.

[Str8bs (str8bslinux)]

Dear maintainer,

I experience the same with 12.04 LTS PPC64 Nvidida FX5200.
unity 2d or booting with nouveau.noaccel=1 (defaults to 2D) bypasses the bug.

The same hardware using LXDE also experiences this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-nouveau/+bug/952101

Again, booting with noveau.noaccel=1 bypasses/avoids the bug there. Since noaccel defaults to 2D, I am not sure how to go about isolating if these are symptoms of one issue or separate.

Just for clarity: The attached is what I see when booting desktop iso WITHOUT nouveau.noaccel=1. (This image is from another poster on the forum, but identical to mine. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2019042)

Thanks

[penalvch (penalvch)]

David Mitchell, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-video-nouveau REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]