desktop effects black desktop

[Emmanuel Touzery]

Binary package hint: kwin

I installed kubuntu alpha5 and it's now upgraded to the latest packages as of 2009-09-19.

When enabling desktop effects in kwin the desktop turns black. It stays black even after logging out and logging back in. i saw it working a couple of times but i'm not sure how i did it.

this is on free software ATI drivers, ATI r200 (RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE]).

[lspci]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] Host Bridge [1106:3189] (rev 80)
     Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:807f]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 SE] [1002:5964] (rev 01)
     Subsystem: Info-Tek Corp. Device [18bc:0170]

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

The same happens if I run compiz. Black desktop. So it seems to be between compositing and plasma maybe?

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

The free ATI drivers aren't known for their stellar 3D support. It's probably a bug with the drivers.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

I also reported this in the KDE bugzilla and they say the same, the drivers are probably guilty:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208106

however I was using GNOME+compiz without any problems on this hardware in quite some past versions of ubuntu (including 9.04). I don't have GNOME installed right now on my computer to check though.

But yes, it's probably a problem with the drivers.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

Since it's maybe with the drivers I opened a freedesktop bug:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24074

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi emmanuel-touzery,

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn` and `dmesg`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (and maybe Xorg.0.log.old) file from after reproducing this issue. If you're using a custom /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

(attached some of these files also on the freedesktop bug)

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

and the same happens with GNOME. It's not only KDE.
This worked fine in ubuntu 9.10, it's a regression.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

in the freedesktop bug, a developer said that the problem is most likely in mesa.
reassigning to mesa.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Can you please try the mesa package from https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/x-updates/ ?

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

I'll try it soon, but otherwise as I wrote in the freedesktop bug I tried with a mesa from GIT from a couple of days ago and it didn't work (in fact only rather old mesa versions worked) so I expect it also won't work. But I'll try when I have the chance.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

Yes I can confirm the bug still happens with the PPA you gave.
black desktop.

At first when I installed those packages X crashed when I turned on 3d but I realized it's because it was still using my self-compiled libdrm that I used to test old versions of mesa.
When i asked APT to reinstall the libdrm package, back to normal and black desktop.

[bjaglin (bjaglin)]

Same here with a radeon Mobility FireGL 9000 (RV250). I had a look at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24074 and the problem disappear when downgrading libgl1-mesa-dri to 7.5 or 7.4, so it really seems to be mesa related. Anything I tried in 7.6 and 7.7 branches was horribly slow and buggy for me.

[Emmanuel Touzery (emmanuel-touzery)]

I found this related bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/444139

and this forum thread with some more info:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1278410

Maybe this bug is a duplicate of 444139.