[Intrepid] Usplash Screen Corruption

Bug #243682 reported by Matt Austin
108
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
usplash (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned
Intrepid
Fix Released
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: usplash

Usplash Screen Corruption causes a flashing red screen.

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Alpha 1 on the Asus EeePC 701 with integrated Intel GMA 900.

On shutdown, the screen flashes with corrupted graphics, before flashing red. Finally, the Ubuntu shutdown progress bar appears before the machine turns off.
(see attached video (H.264)).

This is not 100% reproducible, but happens on the majority of shutdowns.

See also bug 245849, about scraps of the progress bar being repeated on the startup screen.

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Matt Austin (mattaustin) wrote :
description: updated
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Matt Austin (mattaustin) wrote :
description: updated
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Pramod Dematagoda (pmdematagoda) wrote :

I must add to this, this happens on my PC all the time when it starts up and sometimes when it shuts down, in my case I see a mass of white and black.

My VGA card is an Nvidia 6200.

Changed in usplash:
status: New → Confirmed
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Jon Ramvi (ramvi) wrote :

You've got a nvidia card in your Asus eee? *skeptical smiley*

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Pramod Dematagoda (pmdematagoda) wrote :

Are you talking about the first reporter? If so, I have no idea. If you refer to my comment, I am not talking about this issue occurring in an Eee PC, but in a normal desktop. But I do see that the current topic can cause some problems and does not directly show the scope of the problem. So I am changing the topic of the bug report to something a bit better(hope the reported doesn't mind).

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Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

Thanks for your bug report. Can you attach the file created by this command in a terminal? sudo lspci -nnvv > lspci-nnvv.txt

This way, we will have all informations concerning your graphic card.

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Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

I just got a screen corruption too with intrepid with my Dell laptop, this is the first time on ~20 boot with intrepid that I see such phenomenon.

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Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :
Changed in usplash:
importance: Undecided → Medium
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Pramod Dematagoda (pmdematagoda) wrote :

The output of the command given.

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Matt Austin (mattaustin) wrote :
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Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

We have ATI, nvidia and intel cards here, so this bug is probably not specific to any hardware.

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Goro (ggoro) wrote :

Today installed Intrepid Alpha2 and I got the same on my laptop.

model: Lenovo Z61m
Display: 1680x1050
Videocard: ATI X1400
Connected to docking station with DVI connected to another monitor, but for now I use laptop display as primary.

 /etc/usplash.conf
doesn't contain resolution only two comments

Here problem is showed only in first two boot/reboot, in all latter restarts problem is gone, but resolution is the lowest avalible 320x240 or 640x480 I can say exactly because screen is with pretty high dpi.
After installation of all available updates, some package rebuild initramfs and problem is back but again only on first reboot, in all latter it is showed correct but with the lowest resolution.

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Bill K. (mataska44-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I get the same usplash corruption where the progress bar gets drawn multiple times on the screen during boot, but not during shut down.

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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :

I have problems reliably booting Intrepid my Lenovo ThinkPad X61s too. After the messages from Grub has been printed (Starting up... \ Loading, please wait...) it will usually end up in a state where the blinking cursor is shown in the top-left corner of the screen. However, sometimes the screen is completely blank (but still lit), some other times I've seen some blue patterns along the upper edge of the screen (pic attached), sometimes most of the screen is flashing red (vid attached).

If I remove «splash» from the kernel command line it will boot correctly, although there's some error messages relating to uvesafb printed before I'm asked for my passphrashe. I've attached a pic.

With the usplash included on the Kubuntu Intrepid alpha-2 CD it would usually work fine (however there was some cosmetic corruption with the progress bar showing up in other parts of the screen), although I ran into the above problems (except maybe the blue patterns, not sure) from time to time. Another boot would normally correct it. However, after doing a dist-upgrade it _always_ fails.

Tore

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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :
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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :
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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :
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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :

Another thing - if I boot with "quiet" removed (but "splash" in place), it appears to get to initramfs every time. Sometimes the screen will briefly blank (flash) and it will return me to the kernel messages, hanging right after the hard drive has been discovered. I assume that it is here waiting for me to input my passphrase, and that usplash was supposed to to the prompting. This is probably the counterpart of when only the blinking cursor is shown.

Sometimes it won't briefly blank, but at that moment instead go into a state where the screen is flashing with turquoise bars and solid red.

I've tried inputting my passphrase blindly (when it doesn't go into flashing mode) but it doesn't continue booting - I assume usplash is taking care of keyboard input as well and that it doesn't work.

Tore

Revision history for this message
Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote :

I see things very similar to IntrepidAlpha1-EeePC-Shutdown.avi and red-flashes.mp4 (both on startup). This is on a ThinkPad T61 with Intel 965GM graphics.

Revision history for this message
Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

There's been several people reporting blank or corrupted usplash in Intrepid including myself. I just found that if I boot without usplash, right after Grub menu, initramfs complains :uvesafb : Failed to execute /sbin/v86d

This is strange because I don't use any framebuffer mode, and uvesafb seems to start anyway. /sbin/v86d is not installed by default. In my case, installing "v86d" package is a workaround that brought usplash back to life. Can someone try this workaround and confirm if it solves the issue?

See also bug 246269

Revision history for this message
Matt Zimmerman (mdz) wrote : Re: [Bug 243682] Re: [Intrepid] Usplash Screen Corruption

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 01:21:42AM -0000, Saïvann Carignan wrote:
> There's been several people reporting blank or corrupted usplash in
> Intrepid including myself. I just found that if I boot without usplash,
> right after Grub menu, initramfs complains :uvesafb : Failed to execute
> /sbin/v86d
>
> This is strange because I don't use any framebuffer mode, and uvesafb
> seems to start anyway.

I noticed this as well, and it's described by bug 246269.

> /sbin/v86d is not installed by default. In my
> case, installing "v86d" package is a workaround that brought usplash
> back to life. Can someone try this workaround and confirm if it solves
> the issue?

Installing v86d, and thereby enabling uvesafb, made things much worse for
me. X wouldn't even start properly.

I have since reinstalled Alpha 3 in order to switch this machine from i386
to amd64, and somewhere in the course of that change, this problem went
away.

Does anyone else here happen to have been running Ubuntu i386 on 64-bit
hardware when experiencing this bug?

--
 - mdz

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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :

Matt,

yes, I'm running the i386 version on x86_64 hardware.

Tore

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Bill K. (mataska44-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

As of Alpha 3 I'm still getting the progress bar drawn several times on the screen. I attached some photos of what it looks like.

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Bill K. (mataska44-deactivatedaccount) wrote :
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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :

There has been some change in behaviour for me in Kubuntu alpha-3, now the splash screen always fails to appear, and during boot I see only the blinking "_" in the upper-left corner of the screen. When booting the LiveCD it stays there for a while until normal bootup messages appears (starting with «Setting preliminary keymap» or something like that). When booting an installed system it just stops there. I assume this is due to the bootup process stopping to ask me for my LUKS passphrase, but since usplash doesn't work I don't get the prompt either, so I'm stuck.

As with alpha-2 it boots up fine once I remove "splash" from the command line.

Tore

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xens (r-aviolat) wrote :

Same problem here, it happens (not every time) on boot and shutdown. When the startup "works" I also have the 3 progress bar like the video of Matt Austin.

http://img183.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc00463kh7.jpg

my computer is a DELL Latitude D630

Revision history for this message
xens (r-aviolat) wrote :

forgot to say...

running Intrepid Ibex alpha 3 with latests updates installed. Kernel is 2.6.26-5-generic

thanks

Matt Austin (mattaustin)
description: updated
Revision history for this message
Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

Matt Austin : you marked bug 245849 and all his duplicates ( bug 244688, bug 249875, bug 250261, bug 251762, bug 252146) as duplicates of this bug. However, these are IMO completely different issues which happens independently. bug 243682 is about corrupted red usplash screen and bug 245849 is about duplicated/broken status bar. If there is no proof that these bugs are the same, we should un-duplicate them to be sure that they will both get fixed for the final release of intrepid.

Revision history for this message
Matt Austin (mattaustin) wrote :

Saïvann Carignan: You may be right, in which case I have made a big mistake! I thought that this was the same issue because when starting up my machine, ~6/10 times I get progress bar corruption and ~4/10 times a flashing red screen. On shutdown I always get a flashing red screen. If the consensus is that they are separate issues, then of course we should un-dupe them, and I apologise for my mistake.

Does everyone who has the progress bar issue also have the flashing red screen issue?

Revision history for this message
Saivann Carignan (oxmosys) wrote :

Matt Austin : No problem here ;) Bug 245849 didn't appear at the same time than bug 243682 and it can be reproduced independently on many computers. Also, bug 245849 appeared in the past with previous ubuntu releases and is probably caused by modifications in boot processes while it's the first time that I see bug 243682 which seems to be caused by current intrepid framebuffer that should be disabled in the future. Unless a developer confirm that these two behavior are caused by the same bug, we can consider them as separate issue. Thanks for your fast reaction!

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Peter Clifton (pcjc2) wrote :

As a data-point, I started experiencing this bug (duplicated progress bar sections) when attempting to run the Intrepid kernel with Hardy. I've tried 2.6.26-2-generic and 2.6.26-5-generic, both manifest this behaviour.

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LEVIS Cyril (atlas95) wrote :

I have all those problem (duplicate bar, red screen) on my m1330 (nvidia 8400gs card) with lastest update.

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nicksk (nicksk-deactivatedaccount) wrote :

I installed Alpha 3 today on my laptop (using ATI graphics.) I confirm this bug as well. When using livecd i could see red screen with white stripes then after install i could see red screen during starting. I tried updating, but it didnt help.

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kede (kede) wrote :

I confirm this with alpha 4 on acer travelmate 4001 lmi with ati mobility radeon 9700/64MB.
(duplicate bar, red screen with white blocks on it)

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Michael Rooney (mrooney) wrote :

Now that bug 243682 is separated, I think this description needs some cleanup to be more specific to just the red/white lines corruption and not talk about the progress bar issue, as that is likely to confuse people finding/following this bug report. The startup video probably belongs in the other report.

I also wanted to confirm that both of these issues affect me, seemingly random which one, at startup; shutdowns have not been affected as far as I have noticed, though my experiments were far from scientific.

description: updated
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Artur Rona (ari-tczew) wrote :

I can confirm this bug.
VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7300 GT] [10de:0393] (rev a1)
Linux localhost 2.6.26-5-generic

description: updated
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Mike Basinger (mike.basinger) wrote :

Had similar behavior with Intrepid Alpha 4 on a Dell XPS m1330 with NVidia 8400 GS card.

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emil.s (emil.s) wrote :

I does also have a similar problem... An old ATI X300 which always have worked here..

But even worse: The virtual console isn't working!

Video is coming soon.

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JLR (artirj) wrote :

Same problem here on VirtualBox

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Adam Cyr (magnifiedx) wrote :

Same problem, red background with white characters.

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Kyle M Weller (kylew) wrote :

I have EXTREME curruption on every boot up, I dont even see the splash screen just white lines where text should be

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Tore Anderson (toreanderson) wrote :

After an dist-upgrade today, I retried booting using "splash", and now it works correctly (and reliably, too). No corruption at all. So for me it seems this bug is fixed (no idea what did the trick, though).

Tore

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Juan Pablo Salazar Bertín (snifer) wrote :

I'm not experiencing this bug anymore.

snifer@snifer-laptop:~$ dpkg -l | grep usplash
ii libusplash0 0.5.23 userspace bootsplash library
ii usplash 0.5.23 Userspace bootsplash utility
ii usplash-theme-ubuntu 0.19 Usplash theme for Ubuntu
snifer@snifer-laptop:~$ uname -a
Linux snifer-laptop 2.6.27-2-generic #1 SMP Thu Aug 28 17:20:02 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Revision history for this message
nullack (nullack) wrote :

I also have observed this is fixed. Since thats three users now I am moving the status to fix released. Should any user still be able to replicate the problem and who has confirmed they have correctly updated their install to synch with the repos, please advise.

Changed in usplash:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Dean Loros (autocrosser) wrote :

I am having a similar problem to this--take a look at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/usplash/+bug/235662

In my case, the corruption is the minor problem--there "seems" to be a conflict between bios & Usplash--I sometimes get solid warnings from my pc speaker that last as long as I care to hear it :(

This has been as long as I have been testing Ibex (day 1) & thru several fresh installs. In the hopes that it is a motherboard issue, I am upgrading tomorrow. Will see if this all stops with a different board--if so, I will recommend that a note is posted about the board I am currently using--Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L

Revision history for this message
Dean Loros (autocrosser) wrote :

Nullack--my problem is still there--nothing that has been released has fixed it--I am trying to tie these bugreports together as it is starting to look to me that my wide-screem monitor may be the problem---using a Hanns_g 28' monitor with a native 1920x1200 resolution. Changing the motherboard & changing to SLI with two BFG 8600 GT/OC cards has had no change to the problem. I remove "nosplash" from my kernel line every so often to test. No change as of todays updates.

Revision history for this message
Michael Mikowski (kfocus) wrote :

Confirmed still present on Intrepid Kubuntu final, fully patched to this date (20081220). Running on two boxes, one with 1920x1200 resolution. That box continues to experience problems. Details:

* box 1: 1024 x 768 resolution, no problem.
$ lspci |grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

* box 2: 1920x1200 resolution as Dean Loros mentioned, extreme tearing of image
$ lspci |grep -i vga
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce 7800 GTX] (rev a1)
nvidia nforce chipset

Revision history for this message
Michael Mikowski (kfocus) wrote :

Fixed for my box. Here is the procedure:

1. On boot, enter the grub menu and add this to the kernel line, vga=ask, e.g:
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=61deb805-3f3b-47b3-9349-8c43ae3c3aa9 vga=ask ro quiet splash
2. You will be presented with list of available modes. Select one that is appropriate for your screen. A mode for your native resolution many not be available, e.g. I do not have a mode for 1920x1200 shown. I selected VESA mode 791
3. Continue boot; usplash was shifted, but otherwise looked ok. After boot, make sure your virtual terminals look ok (i.e. ctrl-alt-f1 and make sure the text looks good!). If not, return to step 1.
4. Run usplash -x1024 -y768. This step is probably not necessary.
5. Edit /etc/usplash.conf and set the resolution to 1024x768 (in this example) or whatever your resolution is.
6. Edit /boot/grub/menu.list, update the kernel line for your boot image to include the vga line.
  kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=61deb805-3f3b-47b3-9349-8c43ae3c3aa9 vga=791 ro quiet splash
7. Run update-initramfs -u
8. Reboot

It appears that on some installs, usplash is configured for an unsupported vga mode. Potential steps to correct on installation:

1. Scan for available vga modes and select one that is available and appropriate [unsure of the heuristics here :( ]
2. Set resolution to mode in /etc/usplash.conf
3. Run update-initramfs -u to update initial ramdisk image

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