Ubuntu 17.10 graphical login and desktop unreadable (no hsync, tearing) on AMD Epyc servers

[Duane Voth]

Seen on both SuperMicro and Dell AMD Epyc based servers (that's right, I installed the desktop version of 17.10 on a server):

Dell:
$ lspci | grep VGA
83:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. Device 0536 (rev 04)
$ lspci -s 83:00 -n
83:00.0 0300: 102b:0536 (rev 04)

SuperMicro:
$ lspci | grep VGA
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ASPEED Technology, Inc. ASPEED Graphics Family (rev 41)
$ lspci -s 02:00 -n
02:00.0 0300: 1a03:2000 (rev 41)

The Xwayland default is not a good one here, editing /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and removing the comment in front of WaylandEnable=false has fixed every system that has failed.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Hi, can you please take a photo of the "desktop unreadable (no hsync, tearing)" problem when Wayland is enabled?

[Duane Voth (duanev)]

Sure. I've attached two photos, *115057.jpg is with Xwayland enabled, *115744.jpg disabled. Note that this "tearing" may be different from other reports - nothing is moving on the display (ie. it is possible wayland simply read the horizontal frame buffer dimensions wrong).

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Two more questions:

  1. Does the "tearing" move or is it stationary?
  2. When you log in to the Xorg session, what is the output from 'xrandr' on the machine(s)?

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