[amdgpu][radeon][regression] Full screen white flash from time to time (Wayland and X11)

[Hadrien]

I am using Ubuntu 18.04 with gnome shell on Wayland.

From time to time, maybe every one or two hours, the desktop becomes white for a fraction of second. I guess it is just one frame (1/60 of second). It looks like a full filled rectangle of white color but it is so fast I cannot verify to be sure (the only solution I'm thinking of would be to have a fast recording camera pointed to my display).

I did not experience that problem on Ubuntu 17.10 with Wayland.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-shell 3.28.0-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-15.16-generic 4.15.15
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-15-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Apr 18 19:26:15 2018
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-04-07 (11 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Alpha amd64 (20180403)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Hadrien (psydk)]

I used X11 more often lately and faced the same bug, so it is not actually a Wayland only problem.

It seems the flash occurs only in the evening. So my guess is that the bug is related to the Night Mode of Gnome that randomly deactivates itself for one frame.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

From what I've seen of the gnome-shell/mutter/clutter/cogl source code, they use white as a default colour. So if you see something that's all white it means there's meant to be a texture or image there, but for some reason it failed to render.

That might sound obvious and meaningless but it's not :)

Can you please attach output from this command?

  lspci -k

because I think this issue will be driver-specific.

[Hadrien (psydk)]

Mesa version is the one that comes with Ubuntu 18.04: Mesa 18.0.0-rc5

[Hadrien (psydk)]

I am on Ubuntu 20.04 and never observed that problem.