[radeon] Application windows in 18.04.01 go black but launcher is still visible

[Paul Chambre]

Intermittently and randomly, all application windows will go black. They are still there, and can be interacted with with keyboard shortcuts or if you know where to click with the mouse, but they are not drawn.

The launcher itself is still displayed.

Clicking Show Applications briefly draws the application window before switching to the background and application icons. The application icons are shown correctly. Selecting one switches to a black window for that application. The application window is again briefly displayed when dismissing the application icons by again clicking Show Applications.

TTYs work normally.

Killing gnome (from another TTY) and allowing it to relaunch results in a normal display again.

This is being seen on an hp 6910p. This system also exhibits a corrupted lock screen since upgrade to 18.04.01. Neither of these behaviors were seen during two years running 16.04.01.

Chrome is being used. Current 70.00.3538.77 (64-bit). Chrome is the most commonly used application on this machine, so it is possible that the behavior is being triggered by Chrome, however, the behavior affects all applications, including system applications like software update and terminal.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please run this command to send us more information about the system:

  apport-collect 1799947

[Paul Chambre (pchambre)]

I tried, but launchpad.net stays stuck at "Almost finished" and doesn't actually create the launchpad.credentials file, even though the web UI says that the system is authorized.

[Paul Chambre (pchambre)]

OK. I apparently had to chmod permissions on .cache/apport to allow it to write the credentials file.

Now I get: "You are not the reporter or subscriber of this problem report, or the report is a duplicate or already closed."

On the bright side, I haven't seen a black window in a couple of days.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

In that case, please manually attach the output from running each of these commands:

  * lspci -k
  * cat /proc/cpuinfo
  * dpkg -l
  * xrandr
  * journalctl -b

[Paul Chambre (pchambre)]

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport
 Kernel modules: shpchp
00:03.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965 MEI Controller (rev 0c)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: mei_me
 Kernel modules: mei_me
00:03.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965 PT IDER Controller (rev 0c)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: ata_generic
 Kernel modules: pata_acpi
00:03.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965 KT Controller (rev 0c)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: serial
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: e1000e
 Kernel modules: e1000e
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: ehci-pci
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
 Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport
 Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
 Kernel driver in use: pcieport
 Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: ehci-pci
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel driver in use: lpc_ich
 Kernel modules: lpc_ich
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Compaq 6910p
 Kernel drive...

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please try logging into "Ubuntu on Wayland" instead of "Ubuntu" and tell us if that stopps the bug from happening.

[Paul Chambre (pchambre)]

Took me a while to figure out how to enable Wayland. Apparently WaylandEnable needs to be set explicitly to true in custom.conf to appear in the login choices. Running with it now... One thing I can say is that it seems to have fixed a problem where my entire Gnome session would crash when I tried to open a 10MP JPG.

[Paul Chambre (pchambre)]

On the flip-side, I still have a corrupted lock screen, and, under Wayland, two-finger trackpad scrolling doesn't work anymore.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please log new bugs for those other issues.

Regarding this bug about application windows going black, is that fixed by using Wayland?

[Paul Chambre (pchambre)]

I saw what looks like the same issue under Wayland today. It was slightly different than what I had seen before in that I had one window (Chrome) that wasn't black. All others were. The issue started when I clicked to upload a file to a web page. The Chrome window went subdued, which it normally will do when it's launching the file chooser to select a file to upload, but the file chooser came up all black, and Chrome remained subdued and unresponsive (at least in that tab). Other application windows were also all black, including newly launched ones (tried another Files and also a Terminal window).

Logging out and logging back in corrected the behavior.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.