drm/i915: Unity-control-center (or any other settings module) makes the system unresponsive (Unity7, Zesty) for Kernel > 4.6

[Khurshid Alam]

After upgrading driver from 2:2.99.917+git20160325-1ubuntu1 to 2:2.99.917+git20160706-1ubuntu1,

Whenever I open ¨Unity-Control-Center¨ makes the system unresponsive for a while and sometimes forever. Same thing happens if I try to open power or sound settings from indicators or when I try to add online accounts in evolution.

I can reproduce same with totem. But all other applications are working fine. And everything works in Yakkety.

Screencast:https://youtu.be/69PJZf055V8

I am happy to provide any other debugging info. Just don ask to use ¨apport collect¨ as it hangs as well! I can provide details manually through syslog or something.

System: Custom made (Intel Core2duo, 4GB RAM, Intel Mobile GME965/GLE960 Integrated Graphics)
Graphics driver: i915
Os: Ubuntu 17.04, 32bit
UCC: 15.04.0+17.04.20161125.1-0ubuntu1

Edit: If I boot to recovery and use gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe, problem disappears as well. That is why I think itś some sort of graphics issue.

[Khurshid Alam (khurshid-alam)]

I just tried linux kernel 4.4.21 from mainline ppa. System settings doesn't hang any more. So I am guessing problem lies in kernel > 4.6. Marking it as affected.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1659231

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Would it be possible for you to test the latest upstream kernel? Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Please test the latest v4.10 kernel[0].

If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tag 'kernel-fixed-upstream'.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the tag: 'kernel-bug-exists-upstream'.

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug as "Confirmed".

Thanks in advance.

[0] http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.10-rc7

[Khurshid Alam (khurshid-alam)]

@Joseph

Ok. I will try 4.10.rc7 and comment here.

[Khurshid Alam (khurshid-alam)]

Well there are two problems here

1) Kernel warning: drm_irq.c:1326 drm_wait_one_vblank+0x191/0x1a0 [drm]().....This is probably due to https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/74c090b1bdc57b1c9f1361908cca5a3d8a80fb08 as stated in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93782

This can be fixed in by appending "video=SVIDEO-1:d" to kernel boot command.

2) It's this bug which still exists in v4.10-rc7. The possible cause is :

ea0000f0d369a59c2086fe9c489e0a2a86e080ba - drm/i915: Roll out the helper nonblock tracking.

A patch (https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/128918/) was proposed to disable it But according to @Jim Rees's comment on the patch they are not going to push it 4.9 and it may not land for 4.10 either.

So that means I have to manually apply the patch and see if it gets fixed.

Related bug: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96781