garbled text in emacs and odd colors in xfce4-terminal after being logged in for a while

[Jason Woodward]

After using emacs for a while (sometimes hours, sometimes days) the text in them will go garbled, and the cursor disappears. xfce4-terminals also sometimes change their coloring while they're running. Restarting the terminal or emacs doesn't help, but restarting X does. I'm using xrandr on the command line to do dual displays. Yeah, this is kind of a crappy bug report but I'm not sure how to describe what I'm seeing in terms that Google understands. I'm plenty happy to help troubleshoot.

This is a 11.10 server (upgraded from 11.04 original install) with the xubuntu packages added later which I now use as my desktop. Video is onboard on an ASUS P8H67-M EVO: lspci shows 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09).

See attached screenshot of emacs showing garbled text.

Not as severe/pervasive as in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/667737

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: xorg 1:7.6+7ubuntu7.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-16.29-server 3.0.20
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-16-server x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Mar 14 18:51:45 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110426)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: xorg
Symptom: display
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-02-05 (38 days ago)
---
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110426)
Package: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.15.901-1ubuntu2.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-16.29-server 3.0.20
Tags: oneiric
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-16-server x86_64
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-02-05 (53 days ago)
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout libvirtd lpadmin plugdev sambashare www-data

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

It has been doing this for a while, but I just now bothered to report it. Next time an xfce4-terminal gets hosed I'll post a screenshot of that too.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

Firefox just got a little garbled too

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

... and, after a refresh. the FF garble shown in the previous screenshot was after coming back from a locked screen.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

... and the location bar in chrome. some characters have turned white.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

After two days of not letting this go into xscreensaver the problem has not recurred. I'll give it a few more days and then tag xscreensaver too.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

another day, still no problems. seems to be related to xscreensaver somehow.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

still not clear where the root cause is, but it doesn't recur if I don't let it go into screensaver / locked screen mode. Screen still blanks just fine though.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

This must be a bug in the graphics driver. xscreensaver just uses standard X11 requests to blank or turn off the screen. You may check if turning off the screen with DPMS causes the corruption. First stop the xscreensaver daemon:
 xscreensaver-command -exit
Then power down the screen and on again after 5 seconds:
 xset dpms force off; sleep 5; xset dpms force on

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

Thanks for jumping in! The corruption did not immediately recur. I will execute the turn-off for a longer period, and report back with the behavior tomorrow.

woodwardjd@mango:~$ xscreensaver-command -exit
xscreensaver-command: exiting.

woodwardjd@mango:~$ ps axuwf | grep xscreen
1000 9827 0.0 0.0 12044 908 pts/2 S+ 01:02 0:00 | \_ grep --color=auto xscreen
woodwardjd@mango:~$ xset dpms force off; sleep 5; xset dpms force on
woodwardjd@mango:~$

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

Yeah, still working fine this morning.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Are you using a particular screensaver "hack"? Like a 3D one? Or a random one, in which case you may try out cycling through the different screensavers until you see corruption. That would also be a driver issue, although in mesa/kernel, but it would help to pinpoint what exactly triggers it.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Please also run "apport-collect 955585" so that we get system logs attached.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

apport information

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

> Are you using a particular screensaver "hack"? Like a 3D one?

Nothing more than clicking on the "Lock Screen" Action Button. I didn't do any configuration of xscreensaver in either a gui control panel or in a config file somewhere.

> Or a random one, in which case you may try out cycling through the different screensavers until you see corruption. That would also be a driver issue, although in mesa/kernel, but it would help to pinpoint what exactly triggers it.

I will do some experiments.

I should note that, in the interim between 8 days ago and today when I've had a chance to look at this again, the problem has occurred after being logged in for that entire time without locking the screen.

[Davorama (banksenator)]

I am having this same problem. Emailcs, Firefix, and Thunderbird are all haveing trouble and the
screens look the same as Jason Woodward (0looz)

Please let me know if I can provide any additional diagnostic info.

[Jason Woodward (0looz)]

Sorry I didn't have a chance to troubleshoot more. Got super swamped.

I upgraded this machine to 12.04 a day or two after it was released, and this problem has not recurred.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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