garbled graphics and text after launching unity

[Ryan Gyger]

Binary package hint: unity

After launching Unity, most of the tooltips and menu items become completely garbled so that you can't read them, and all of the shortcuts in the launcher menu have lines behind them. I am running an Acer Aspire 5515.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: unity 3.2.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.37-6.17-generic 2.6.37-rc3
Uname: Linux 2.6.37-6-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Nov 26 14:14:48 2010
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100427)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity

[Ryan Gyger (ryan-rgckstudios)]

Here is a screenshot of what I mean.

[David Barth (dbarth)]

Very interesting... even if that's not what you should expect from Unity. Is that constantly distorted, or is it random? Do you experience other rendering issues in Unity? Do you experience rendering issues with other applications like glxgears or Billard GL for example?

[Ryan Gyger (ryan-rgckstudios)]

Every time I start Unity... and it stays that way until I log out. I don't seem to have any other rendering issues. Tested using Billiard GL... both inside and outside of Unity.

[Alex Launi (alexlauni)]

Could you please also give us lspci -vv and glxinfo output?

[Ryan Gyger (ryan-rgckstudios)]

I have attached output of both.

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

Jay, any ideas? It's looks a lot like the 32-bit issues we were having a few weeks back...

[Jay Taoko (jaytaoko)]

This looks like a memory alignment issue when loading images into opengl texture. Could be and issue with glPixelStorei and GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT...

[manny (estelar57)]

same issue here.

Natty Alpha1
Ati xpress 1250 (or x1250)
Ati open drivers (only ones available)

seeing some tearing also on full screen flash videos.

If you guys need more info, please let me know.

Thanks :)

[manny (estelar57)]

the OP's laptop model also has an Ati card and is using the open drivers.

I suspect most of the Laptops shipped with Ati graphics will have the same issue.

[avaddon (alexandr-domrachev)]

I'm having exactly same problem (radeon x1200 too).
qtdemo also has similar corrupted textures

[William A Ellerbe (waellerbe)]

I have an Acer Aspire 5516 laptop with 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon Graphics, and the AMD Athlon 64 bit processor. I'm basically running into the same challenges described by Ryan Gyger on 11/26/10.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I've seen this type of corruption before with -ati. I think this is a driver bug.

Could you run 'apport collect 681915'? This will attach necessary files for diagnosing X bugs. Then I think we should forward this upstream for guidance.

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

If I run qtdemo as follows the corruption disappears:
LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT= qtdemo

This also works with firefox flash videos if I start firefox's initial browser instance with this environment variable.

[avaddon (alexandr-domrachev)]

This bug (and corruption with qtdemo) dissapeared some time ago for me.
Radeon X1200 with xorg-edgers ppa

[manny (estelar57)]

i just tested the xorg-edgers ppa, and i can confirm that the graphical glitches were solved in my test install.

fullscreen flash glitches also disappeared.

So i guess the new drivers will need to be included by default in natty, if not the unusable desktop glitches will keep presenting itself.

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: No value set for `/apps/compiz-1/general/allscreens/options/active_plugins'
CompositorRunning: compiz
DRM.card0.LVDS.1:
 status: connected
 enabled: enabled
 dpms: On
 modes: 1440x900 1280x854 1280x800 1280x720 1152x768 1024x768 800x600 848x480 720x480 640x480
 edid-base64: AP///////wBMo0c4AAAAAAAQAQOAJRd4Cof1lFdPjCcnUFQAAAABAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBAQEBnyWgQFGEDDBAIDMAb+YQAAAZAAAADwAAAAAAAAAAAHjmAiMAAAAA/gBTQU1TVU5HCiAgICAgAAAA/gBMVE4xNzBYMi1MMDIKAPE=
DRM.card0.VGA.1:
 status: disconnected
 enabled: disabled
 dpms: On
 modes:
 edid-base64:
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: natty
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
DistroVariant: ubuntu
GraphicsCard: Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:ff68]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101216)
InstallationMedia_: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101216)
InstallationMedia__: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101216)
MachineType: TOSHIBA Satellite L355D
Package: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.13.2-1ubuntu2
PackageArchitecture: i386
PciDisplay: 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series] [1002:791f] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-11-generic root=UUID=e2dc8b84-1a90-4666-8b40-0536ef6da840 ro i2c-algo-bit.bit-test=1
ProcKernelCmdLine_: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-11-generic root=UUID=e2dc8b84-1a90-4666-8b40-0536ef6da840 ro i2c-algo-bit.bit-test=1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.37-11.25-generic 2.6.37-rc7
ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 2.6.37-11.25-generic 2.6.37-rc7
ProcVersionSignature__: Ubuntu 2.6.37-11.25-generic 2.6.37-rc7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.5+6ubuntu6
 libgl1-mesa-glx 7.9+repack-1ubuntu3
 libdrm2 2.4.22-2ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.13.901-2ubuntu2
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.13.2-1ubuntu2
Renderer: Hardware acceleration
Tags: natty natty natty natty ubuntu
Uname: Linux 2.6.37-11-generic i686
UnitySupportTest:

UserGroups:

XorgConf: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/X11/xorg.conf'
dmi.bios.date: 06/04/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Insyde Corp.
dmi.bios.version: 1.90
dmi.board.asset.tag: Base Board Asset Tag
dmi.board.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.board.version: Base Board Version
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacturer
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnInsydeCorp.:bvr1.90:bd06/04/2009:svnTOSHIBA:pnSatelliteL355D:pvrPSLE0U-01000R:rvnTOSHIBA:rn:rvrBaseBoardVersion:cvnChassisManufacturer:ct10:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: Satellite L355D
dmi.product.version: PSLE0U-01000R
dmi.sys.vendor: TOSHIBA
system: distro = Ubuntu, architecture = i686, kernel = 2.6.37-11-generic
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.22-2ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.9+repack-1ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.5+6ubuntu6
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.13.2-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.13.901-2ubuntu2
version.xserv...

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

apport information

[Artem Popov (artfwo)]

I've tried installing only driver packages from xorg-edgers PPA, namely:

xserver-xorg-video-ati_6.13.99+git20110104.30c5f217-0ubuntu0sarvatt2_i386.deb
xserver-xorg-video-radeon_6.13.99+git20110104.30c5f217-0ubuntu0sarvatt2_i386.deb

It didn't solve the problem. After adding the PPA and doing a full apt-get dist-upgrade, the problem disappeared.

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

I was able to trace this problem on my machine to libgl1-mesa-dri.

Using git bisect I was able to identify and successfully test mesa commit 32218e4cc88f7dedebadffe4a80247decf4498f1 as addressing the problem.

I've rebuilt the mesa package with this patch cherry-picked in ppa:jsjgruber/ppatwo, and this seems sufficient to fix the problem for me.

Would anyone having the problem like to test this fix on their computer?

If so, please be sure to run ppa-purge against xorg-edgers if you have applied that ppa to your system.

Also, please be sure to select the correct ppa. I have another ppa containing another mesa package without this patch!

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

The patch from upstream:

Author: Dave Airlie <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Dec 10 15:40:48 2010 +1000

r300g: fixup rs690 tiling stride alignment calculations.

The RS690 memory controller prefers things to be on a different
boundary than the discrete GPUs, we had an attempt to fix this,
but it still failed, this consolidates the stride calculation
into one place and removes the really special case check.

This fixes gnome-shell and 16 piglit tests on my rs690 system.

NOTE: This is a candidate for both the 7.9 and 7.10 branches.

Signed-off-by: Dave Airlie <email address hidden>
(cherry picked from commit d19b5cbd317620f3977e68fffb7a74793436b7e2)

[manny (estelar57)]

#44

thx, John, that is pretty awesome!

i will try your fix when i get home, I'll either purge or probably start from scratch and reinstall the alpha or a daily build :)

i hope others can test this too and get this in much before alpha2 appears.

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

@manny:

Any luck getting it to work?

Anyone else?

[manny (estelar57)]

sorry been having some problems with natty, some update or something i did broke it for me, been trying to get it back to normal, but will probably have to reinstall if tomorrow's big update doesn't fix it for me.

[Ryan Gyger (ryan-rgckstudios)]

ditto... i had to go into tty1 and do a dist-upgrade just to get back to
normal... i will test after the big update.

[manny (estelar57)]

@John S. Gruber

ok, i got things working again, purged the xorg-edgers ppa, things went back to being glitchy, then i installed your ppa "ppa:jsjgruber/ppatwo" and now everything seems to work glitch-free again.

so is verified and working for me.

thanks!

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Good find John. We'll be uploading mesa 7.10 within the next week or two. Sounds like this patch will be included in 7.10, so probably easiest if we wait until that release is in natty, rather than adding it as a patch. Meanwhile anyone with this issue can run xorg-edgers or the patched PPA if they want to eliminate the corruption and testdrive the fix.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

[Closing the -ati task since this is fairly clearly mesa's radeon driver rather than the ddx driver.]

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Oh, I didn't notice that you took care of packaging for it. In that case since most of the work seems to be done, I don't see a reason not to go ahead and upload it, so will do so.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Uploaded and committed to git.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mesa - 7.9+repack-1ubuntu5

---------------
mesa (7.9+repack-1ubuntu5) natty; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/108-r300g-fixup-rs690-tiling-stride-align.patch
    - Cherry pick 32218e4cc88f7dedebadffe4a80247decf4498f1 from upstream
      r300g: fixup rs690 tiling stride alignment calculations
      itself cherrypicked from d19b5cbd317620f3977e68fffb7a74793436b7e2
      addressing unity (and other) text and icon rendering problems.
      (LP: #681915)
 -- John S Gruber <email address hidden> Sun, 09 Jan 2011 14:25:53 -0500

[Helge Willum Thingvad (helgesdk)]

I have a ThinkPad X200 with Intel 4500MHD graphics, and occasionally I have experienced the same kind of display corruption in the panels.
Besides that, going into standby mode or even blanking the monitor sometimes freezes the desktop completely.
I am having huge issues with the new Unity interface, especially in combination with Google Chrome.
Different windows will not draw nor focus correctly, large portions of the screen become corrupted and the window buttons (close, minimize and maximize/restore) tend to disappear from the panel.
Sometimes the left panel refuses to slide back even though I have a maximized window in the foreground.
I am running standard Ubuntu 11.04, fully updated, with universe and multiverse repositories enabled.

I have attached a video of the buggy Unity interface and screen corruption with Google Chrome.

[Helge Willum Thingvad (helgesdk)]

Oups! I just discovered that my screen recordings have audio in them. Sorry.

[John S. Gruber (jsjgruber)]

Helge,

Since the original problem was resolved (it was rather specific), and since this bug is therefore marked as closed, this bug doesn't show up on searches for bug triagers to work on. While I noticed your comments because I'm still subscribed, those triaging problems such as yours probably won't.

Please submit your report as a new bug.

Thanks for your contribution in improving Ubuntu.