Screen Doesn't Refresh Properly

[dibson]

Binary package hint: conky

I'm using:

* Ubunty 8.04, Hardy Heron.
* wmii

When I run conky, the screen doesn't refresh properly. New text gets overlayed over old, and things quickly become unreadable. I don't think this is a conky bug in particular, but I don't know where the source is. Perhaps someone could point this in the correct direction?

This wasn't a problem in Gutsy. I did a clean install of Hardy.

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

Can you give us some info about your intel graphic chipset hardware and driver, as well as a copy of your .conkyrc, /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /var/log/Xorg.0.log files?
Can you try to see what happens with the vesa driver?

[dibson (dibson-hoffweiler)]

Hi Cesare-

I'm experiencing the problem on two machines - same software setup (wmii+clean install of hardy).

One is ThinkPad x60s:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:X60s

Some info about graphics chipset:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Graphics_Media_Accelerator_950#VESA_.28console.29_resolution

The other machine is a Dell Optiplex GX520, which happens to have the same integrated chipset!

I haven't had much experience with graphics drivers/chipsets and the like. If I can run any commands to give you more information, just ask!

And could you clarify what you mean by "Can you try to see what happens with the vesa driver?"
Like I said before, it was fine under Gutsy. I'm using a pretty vanilla install, never messed with graphics configuration. So I'm not sure where to dig into this.

Best,
Dibson

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

ok, thx for all the data you provided, for the time being I can report that I can run your .conkyrc with no issues, I can't exclude yet that this is an issue with conky, but it seems very unlikely..

[dibson (dibson-hoffweiler)]

I doubt this is a big with conky myself. Have you seen this behavior in conky? Or do you know which package I should pass this problem on to? It probably happens in other applications, but I don't know enough about the internals of conky to know where it should go.

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

No, I've never seen this before in conky. Right now I've my suspicions on the intel driver (this is why I asked you to try the vesa one), but this is just a guts feeling. To force the use of the vesa driver, try to add the following to your xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
        Driver "vesa"
EndSection

I don't know if that is enough since xorg autodetection messes things up a lot.
Another possibility is to exclude the window manager, for that try setting own_window to no and experiment with the other own_window settings.
Conky is pretty much a self-standing application, it talks directly to the X server through standard calls and uses only a couple of extensions (notably, xdamage and xdbe).

The problem seems to be a refresh problem, so it may be worth looking into the dbe part of the intel driver.

[Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto)]

Is there any progress on this?

[dibson (dibson-hoffweiler)]

I've found that the problem is not in Conky. I tested conky out in Gnome, and the issue didn't appear. I don't know how the graphic driver stuff works, but I'll nudge the wmii folks to see if they might know what it is happening.

[dibson (dibson-hoffweiler)]

Conky works fine under Gnome, the problem is occurring under wmii only.

[dibson (dibson-hoffweiler)]

This also happens if I run the application "knetworkmanager", which is a panel under KDE. It worked correctly under Gutsy.

[waldschrat (unumsaxum)]

I have the same problem (conky with wmii) and I fixed it by simply setting "own_window_transparent no" in ~/.conkyrc.
The only problem is, that I'd like to have transparency for conky.

[waldschrat (unumsaxum)]

sorry, i forgot: ubuntu 8.04 hardy, wmii 3.6, conky 1.5.1

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Then I'll mark this bug as confirmed.

[Peter Jackson (e36hp-pete-jlg7i)]

I can confirm that I encounter this same issue in Gnome 3 / Gnome Shell / gdm with conky. Setting ' own_window_transparent no' fixes the issue. It also happens in other distros (my Arch box, for example).

[Peter Jackson (e36hp-pete-jlg7i)]

UPDATE: After doing just a little more homework: the issue is related to the pseudo transparency that conky uses and the way the root window image is set. See this FAQ for details: http://conky.sourceforge.net/faq.html

To address the issue, I used "feh" to set my wallpaper instead of gnome-settings, as outlined in the FAQ.