IBM A21p display is corrupted

[Matthew Lenz]

I'm going to attach xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log to assist.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

Here is the Xorg log file for assisting in resolving the bug.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

Here is the xorg.conf to assist in resolving bug.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

Kinda looks similar to https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/28891 but I didn't change any resolutions this is what it looked like on the first boot at the GDM login screen.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

dunno if you can screenshot from gdm if you can I can take a better one.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

this is in dapper. didn't know how to add it specifically to that release. sorry.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

fyi i fixed this by disabling dpms and putting in horizsync and vertrefresh values.

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

Hi Matthew,

Your Xorg.0.log claims a modeline of:

(II) R128(0): Modifying mode according to VBIOS: 640x480 [pclk 25.2 MHz] for FP to: 640x480 [pclk 162.0 MHz]
(--) R128(0): Virtual size is 640x480 (pitch 640)
(**) R128(0): Default mode "640x480": 162.0 MHz (scaled from 25.2 MHz), 31.5 kHz, 60.0 Hz
(II) R128(0): Modeline "640x480" 162.00 640 704 728 1200 480 482 485 530 -hsync -vsync

This is fairly suspicious since an A31p has a 1600x1200 resolution.

What xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log do you use now?

Also, if you re-enabled DPMS, does the problem reappear?

Thanks!

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

Sorry for such a long response on this bug Feisty Herd 5 is still corrupting the display. DPMS seems to be the problem. How can I help get this resolved and fixed upstream? Its got to be either some bug with the hardware or something with the xorg dpms module.

I've been trying to track down the correct h/vsync values for the lcd to get this working again but I didn't keep a copy of my old xorg.conf. I think the old xorg.conf used to have commented h/vsync values to use but that isn't included in feisty's xorg.conf.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi Matthew,

Would you mind re-testing this with a recent Gutsy Live CD? ISOs can be downloaded at http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/gutsy/

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

No reply in two months, closing.

[Longwing (dlongwing)]

The error mentioned here still persists in 7.10. There appears to be misidentification of the a21p LCD, this causes massive screen tearing. The problem is solved by replacing the HorizSync, VertRefresh, and Modelines:

HorizSync 31-77
VertRefresh 50-77

Modeline "640x480" 27.96 640 656 720 864 480 480 485 501
Modeline "800x600" 43.68 800 816 928 1072 600 600 606 626
Modeline "1024x768" 71.39 1024 1040 1216 1400 768 768 776 802
Modeline "1152x864" 90.48 1152 1168 1384 1568 864 864 873 902
Modeline "1280x960" 111.82 1280 1296 1552 1736 960 960 970 1003
Modeline "1280x1024" 119.28 1280 1296 1552 1736 1024 1024 1035 1070
Modeline "1600x1200" 160.16 1600 1616 1968 2208 1200 1200 1212 1253
Modeline "1600x1200" 167.23 1600 1616 1968 2208 1200 1200 1212 1253

Ubuntu's auto detection appears to be getting these values wrong. I'm just an amateur though.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Ok, please try Hardy alpha4 or newer livecd. Those values are not written anymore, so it should work now.

[Longwing (dlongwing)]

I'll burn a copy and give it a test at some point this week. The laptop in question belongs to a friend though, so there may be some delays while I negotiate an opportunity to test it.

[Longwing (dlongwing)]

I booted the computer to the Alpha4 live CD last night, and it immediately encountered the exact same issue. The problem apparently persists in 8.4's current build.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I don't know if this will fix this specific issue, but I've backported a bunch of high importance patches that upstream recommended, that fix problems sort of like this one, so I think it would be worth the time to test. Please try this .deb and report what you find:

http://people.ubuntu.com/~bryce/Testing/ati/

If we can determine that the patches in this deb fix this bug, they may be candidates for backporting to Hardy.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Could people experiencing this issue please check if it still exists in Intrepid? If so, we should forward the bug upstream.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. In the development cycle for Intrepid there have been some vast improvements in the open source ati video driver and we could use your help testing them. Could you please download the latest Alpha CD image of Intrepid and test this particular bug just using the Live CD? You can find the latest image at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . Your testing can help make Ubuntu and the open source ati driver even better! Thanks in advance.

[Matthew Lenz (matthew-nocturnal)]

Neither Intrepid or Hardy will even boot on this machine. Both result in kernel panics.

[Longwing (dlongwing)]

I've seen no problems with 8.04 (Hardy), but I've not had a chance to test 8.10 (Intrepid). As I mentioned, it's not my laptop, it's a friend's. It's also undergoing other problems at the moment (dying CPU fan), so I can't really work on it until we get that fixed.

That said 8.04 works just fine on the computer, just with the aforementioned instability in resolutions. As long as we hack the res, and don't change it, it works. I'd still love to get it properly functional.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Matthew, for what it's worth, if you install an earlier version of the distro and upgrade to Intrepid, it should leave the old kernels there so you can set it up to still use the older kernel with the newer distro. (But understood if you don't wish to go through all this work, I hope your kernel issue gets resolved eventually - did you report it?)

Meanwhile, Longwing, let's focus on your issue since you're able to run Intrepid and have booted alpha-4. Can you please post your /var/log/Xorg.0.log and your /etc/X11/xorg.conf from a "correct" session, and then also post your /var/log/Xorg.0.log from a boot after trying with a default configuration?

[Longwing (dlongwing)]

As I said, I've ~not~ been able to test 8.10 due to problems with the laptop's fan. I can't very well work on a computer that can't stay live for more than a few minutes.

Unfortunately, I may be unable to address the issue further. My friend is considering ditching the A21P for a newer model, and it's unlikely that I'll have access to it after that.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Since the hardware is no longer available for doing troubleshooting with, we'll have to close the bug for now. However please feel free to reopen if you or anyone else has the same HW and can reproduce this issue using the latest development version of Ubuntu and is willing to do some troubleshooting with it.

[Chris H (hurleycd)]

I have an A21p I can test with. I just installed 8.04 and am having this issue. What should I try?

[Chris H (hurleycd)]

btw... I added the horizsync and the vertrefresh values in the xorg.conf and everything works fine. Its the autodetect and the xorg.conf generation on install that's hosed.

[bkamlin (bsbe)]

I have a workaround for the split display. I'm running 8.10 and the display is split after install. I pressed the external video switch (Fn+F7) twice. The video then becomes normal. This also worked with feisty fawn.

[xxx (paggo)]

I also have IBM ThinkPad A21p running Ubuntu 9.04 and I have the same video driver problem as described and my screen looks exactly accordingly to the picture above.
I always used to press Fn+F7 twice to toggle between display modes. The problem is that I don t want to do this everytime and especially that the screen resulution is max @800*600 and I m used to 1600*1200.
That sucks, coz U can t read anything that well in such a low resolution...
I search for a solution, a driver, that enables me to switch to 1600*1200 and prevents the X-Server to seem broken.
The problem seems to be caused by a bad display detection of ubuntu, coz I tried several Linux distros and only ubuntu (and I think Knoppix/Kanotix) seemed to have that problem.
I really would like to do some troubleshooting with the help of you as experts in Linux/bug cases and I will offer any possible help with my hardware.

[David Rees (reesd)]

Seeing the same problem on A21p with Ubuntu 11.04 installed using Wubi. Ready to try things out to help resolve.

[David Rees (reesd)]

I think bug is old enough to be considered New again, or at least not Invalid. I went with New rather than Confirmed, feel that should be done by development team.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 10:37:10PM -0000, David Rees wrote:
> I think bug is old enough to be considered New again, or at least not
> Invalid. I went with New rather than Confirmed, feel that should be done
> by development team.

Fwiw, generally we prefer bugs be re-filed anew using 'ubuntu-bug <pkg>'
with a reference to the old bug, rather than reopened, particularly in
cases where the person reopening is not the original reporter.
Esp. with X bugs, symptoms can often sound the same but the underlying
root cause can be quite different.

[David Rees (reesd)]

Per your request I created the new issue 799986 and referenced this issue #.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Matthew Lenz, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p xserver-xorg-video-ati REPLACE-WITH-BUG-NUMBER

Please note, given that the information from the prior release is already available, doing this on a release prior to the development one would not be helpful.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xserver-xorg-video-ati (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]