Screen flickering

[koen]

Screen flickers (screen with text // black) severely at startup and
installation. Acer travelMate 290 with Radeon 9200 Mobility

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I have a flickering screen too (asus m6ne ati radeon 9700) sometimes, especially when switching among consoles. the solution I could find was switching to another connsole or disabling framebuffer...

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

this bug only occurs when vga16fb, radeonfb or vesafb are loaded. and if you pass vga=normal at boot the issue never occurs

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Nobody seems to have this bug assigned! let's put it to unconfirmed to see if any mantainer gets it

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

Relax... the kernel team is subscribed to the bug so it will be noticed.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Does it flicker in X aswell?

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

yes, also X flickers sometimes

ctrl alt f1 (flickering too), alt f7 (restores normal graphic)

[Asraniel (asraniel)]

same here, its rare, but it happens. switching consoles is the fix for me. not acceptable for newbies

[Timothy Smith (tas50)]

My LCD screen was flickering quite a bit when Ubuntu had the horizontal sync rate completely wrong. Check your xorg.conf against the specs of the screen to make sure it got it right.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Sorry, no baltix!

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

meta package isn't for this bug

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Sorry. I thought that meta was every linux kernel. so we must add
2.6.17 and 2.6.20

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

any suggestion on how to get further info?

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

We don't use any framebuffers any more, so this isn't really a problem now.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

really no framebuffer? but I have the module vesafb loaded...

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

Unless you pass the vga= kernel parameter (which you shouldn't), the vesafb module won't be used. It may still end up loaded, for a variety of reasons.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

ok

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I got my lcd flickering yesterday! So the problem still exists... Since fb is no more enabled might the problem be caused by usplash?

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Best bet is to remove the splash option from /boot/grub/menu.lst and see if it persists.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I have removed the option now. unfortunately the problem is not
present every time, so you'll have to wait it happens againg!

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I haven't had yet any bug confirmation. But I think that sooner or
later it will represent because even if the splash is no more present,
the module vesafb is loaded. and the bug is visible when this module
is loaded!

Who loads it?

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

It should only get loaded if you have splash, or vga=??? in your kernel options.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

not right... this are my boot options: nolapic quiet locale=it_IT

and these modules are loaded:
fbcon 42656 0
tileblit 3584 1 fbcon
font 9216 1 fbcon
bitblit 6912 1 fbcon
vesafb 9220 0

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

just had that issue...

I don't know if it helps but I had it after having enabled xorg option GartSize 64
(just had one issue, not continuous issues)

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I've also had this issue with the new kernel 2.6.22-7 in gutsy

[TJ (tj)]

Nicolò, have you had an opportunity to test this with the latest Gutsy Tribe-5 alpha? Also, which BIOS version does the PC have (I've seen reports of fixes with v214a and later) ?

There are also indications of a manufacturing issue with the screens. Here's a representative report:

"asus m6bn screen flicker" http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5256

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

Yes it's always the same thing. unfortunately my laptop has a
different BIOS tan M6N models, it's M6Ne, and I have the newest bios
(that is quite old now)

[TJ (tj)]

In researching this I've come across a lot of mention of flickering issues with various Radeon 9x00 chipsets, on Windows as well as Linux.

The symptoms seem to suggest that the framebuffer sets a register incorrectly.

There are a whole host of settings that can be set on the kernel boot command-line to control the video modes in this situation. If you're feeling particularly resolved then doing some systematic testing with differing options and recording the results might help narrow-down the issue and show it is frame-buffer related, or else point the finger somewhere else.

See this document for settings: http://lxr.linux.no/source/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

for sure it is framebuffer related since I remember that with the
option vga=none (if I'm not wrong) or without any framebuffer module
compiled in the kernel I don't have this problem.

I don't know if I've already told you but there is a fix which is
always the same and is:
go to the console display, go to the X display, go to the console display
at this point the flicker stops, and you can return to the X display.

The flicker happens more when changing among X and the console (for
example if I switch 20 times, there is a good possibility to have the
flicker at one of these tries)

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

Closing old kernel task.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

We are closing this old bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information (like if this is still a problem), and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Ray_M_From_MO (rayhmeyer)]

New flicker issue with Ubuntu 8.10 on laptop. No issue on previous releases (Badger through Gibbon). Please let me know what I can post to assist with identifying the cause and a solution.

Laptop is Acer 9500, 1400X900 screen resolution. Flicker occurs whenever opening new programs and occasionally when switching between open windows.

[Connor Imes (ckimes)]

Ray, since your problem has only recently appeared, it seems the problem is not likely caused by the same source that this original bug report applies to. You should open a new bug report for your problem. Thank you.

[CofeeJava (robert-wakefield)]

Was Nvidia, have onboard NVIDIA HDMI.... problem occurs on ATI 4850, read something that said it could be associated with HDMI HD audio???

[Chinmay Rajhans (rajhanschinmay)]

I recently installed Ubuntu 11.04 32 bit edition on a desktop machine.
System is working nicely except for screen flickering problem.

I tried changing screen resolution, frequency. Multiple combinations tried but nothing has worked.

Somehow I am able to use the OS now.

Kindly let me know what can be possible solution.

Should I install any driver for this?