[radeon] Screen does not refresh till the mouse moves (ATI ES1000 GPU)

[onli]

When Wayland is activated in GDM, nothing happens when selecting an account with the keyboard or typing in the password. I have to type, then wait, then move the mouse around for the characters to appears.

Because I wouldn't believe this report, I made a video of the problem: https://peertube.mastodon.host/videos/watch/a4d02b33-d71e-4b0e-82cf-f2a74f952ca5

Moving from Wayland to X makes the issue disappear.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gdm3 3.28.2-0ubuntu1.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-23.25-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-23-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Jun 25 18:39:19 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-06-17 (8 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
SourcePackage: gdm3
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.gdm3.custom.conf: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.gdm3.custom.conf: 2018-06-24T23:13:52.497184

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please run 'lspci -k' and send us the output.

[onli (onli)]

I attached the requested output.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. The problem seems to be specific to the radeon driver. Maybe even specific to your ATI ES1000 GPU, which I haven't seen before:

01:03.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] ES1000 (rev 02)
    Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company ES1000
    Kernel driver in use: radeon
    Kernel modules: radeonfb, radeon

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I suggest you stick to Xorg sessions while the bug exists. You can make it permanent by uncommenting:

  #WaylandEnable=false

in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

But if you would like to get the problem fixed and use Wayland in future then please report the problem to the mutter/Gnome developers here:

  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/issues

[onli (onli)]

I will report it there. But are you sure that is not a Wayland issue? That something on the graphics loop can block the whole execution of the program and be woken up by mouse movement sounds like a deep architectural problem to me.

The graphics card is rare, it is integrated in a HP ProLiant DL380 G6, a server system with dual Xeon processors.

[onli (onli)]

I forgot to link the upstream issue: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/issues/204

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.