Dell Precision 7730 - The screen will be flickering after resumed from "display sleep" (ONLY occurs on AUO UHD#8CJK2 panel)

[Leon Liao]

[Summary]
    Dell Precision 7730 - The screen will be flickering after resumed from "display sleep" (ONLY occurs on AUO UHD#8CJK2 panel)

[Reproduce Steps]
    1. Install Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 on Precision 7730;
    2. Disable automatic system sleep;
    3. Wait for display to enter sleep;
    4. Resume from display sleep.

[Results]
    Expected: The screen wakes up as normal;
    Actual: The screen is flickering.

[Additional Information]
    1. This bug can be reproduced both Dell OEM Ubuntu 16.04 image and Canonical Ubuntu 16.04 image (Default video driver/firmware version is 390.25);
    2. This bug still can be reproduced on Ubuntu 18.04;
    3. "apt-get install nvidia current", the video driver/firmware version 304.135 will be installed. This bug does not appear with this driver;
    4. Also tested version 331 (working properly) and version 384 (This bug can be reproduced.);
    5. This bug does not appear on external monitors (working properly via WD15 and directly attached);
    6 Same behavior with BIOS 1.4.2;
    7. Similar behavior with RHEL Enterprise Linux Developer Workstation 7.5 64bit -> No video at all when attempting to resume from display sleep or system sleep;
    8. System is working properly using Windows 10 Pro 64bit;
    9. More information from customer:
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/Precision-7730-display-lined-flickering-in-BIOS-DO-NOT-BUY/td-p/6219020

[Leon Liao (lihow731)]

This bug only happened on AUO UHD#8CJK2 panel.
Until now, we still don't know what is the root cause.

Some information from nvidia:
Add "option HardDPMS true" in xorg.conf, this bug won't be reproduced.

But, only add this option, the screen will be frozen when we login (when the Enable Switchable graphic is enabled in BIOS settings.).

Some information from ODM:
Add below sections in xorg.conf, this bug won't be reproduced and we can login normally.

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/nvidia-418/xorg"
EndSection

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Device0"
 Driver "nvidia"
 VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
 BoardName "Quadro P4200"
 Option "HardDPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Device "nvidia"
    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "Yes"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "intel"
    Driver "modesetting"
    # Change BusID if necessary. Tips: (lspci | grep VGA) (Change 00:02.0 to 0:2:0)
    BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
    Option "AccelMethod" "none"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "intel"
    Device "intel"
EndSection

[Ho Cheung (hocheung20)]

I have this problem on a Precision 7740 with the same panel and AMD Radeon Pro WX 7130 gpu too.

[Leon Liao (lihow731)]

@Ho Cheung,

Could you provide more information about the OS environment?
For example the sosreport output that included ubuntu version, kernel version, amdgpu version ...)

[Leon Liao (lihow731)]

Update some information:

On Precision 7730 with NVIDIA GPU, this bug is fixed in graphic driver nvidia 430.40.

When you installed nvidia 430.40 via .run file that downloaded from NVIDIA official website, there is no any side effect.

If you installed nvidia 430.44 via .deb or apt (for example: https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa), there is a side effect:
If the nvidia graphic VID:PID are 10de:1bb5, 10de:1bb9 and 10de:1bbb, the gdm could not be started well.
Fortunate, there is a workaround that mark or remove below line in /lib/udev/rules.d/71-nvidia.rules.
  ACTION=="add" DEVPATH=="/module/nvidia" SUBSYSTEM=="module" RUN+="/usr/bin/nvidia-smi"

[Alan (asw456)]

I reported the customer issue in the Dell forum post above.

Can confirm I have the exact same issue I reported above with a brand new 7740 running nvidia 440.26 (installed via ppa .deb file) and Ubuntu 19.10

Working around the issue by never letting the laptop sleep.

It's happened 3 times now. It persists through multiple reboot cycles and takes 1-2 days to go away completely, regardless of reboot.

Does this damage the panel?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Alan (asw456)]

Oh also the card is a Quadro RTX4000.

How can I adapt the xorg.conf fix above for the new driver and card?

Pretty keen to know if this damages the panel as well :) thank you