[hardy] Enabling "Normal" effects produces badly drawn window shadows.

[Greg Grossmeier]

Binary package hint: compiz

Running Hardy Alpha 1, with compiz 1:0.6.99+git20071205-0ubuntu4 installed.

When enabling Normal effects the window shadows look horrible. The gradient is bad and also overlap. (Screenshot attached)

Running on an Intel Mobile GM965 chipset. This chipset was blacklisted in the Gutsy version of compiz due to videos crashing when compiz was enabled (bug 111257)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Confirmed, that looks like an intel driver bug

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

It seems that EXA causes this issues.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

the same happens with ATI r200 based chips. According to debian bug 456780 it could be a EXA RENDER acceleration bug in the intel&ati driver, or a bug in EXA itself.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

There are two workarounds, use 'Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"' or 'Option "EXANoComposite" "true"'. The real fix will come later.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Since it was recommended by upstream to switch to EXA in order to de-blacklist 965gm for compiz, this seems like a pretty critical issue, and since several people are reporting seeing it, I'm prioritizing it as such.

Timo, do you know of specific plans underway upstream to work on this issue?

[Alex Wauck (awauck)]

I also have this problem. I have also had seemingly random Compiz crashes (using 100% CPU and necessitating a kill -9 via ssh). I'm still trying to figure out where the problem is, but given the severity of the crash, I suspect it is related to this. When I was running Gutsy, I used XAA and made sure my video apps didn't use Xv, and I did not have such problems.

[Nic (ntetreau)]

Replacing Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" by Option "AccelMethod" "XAA" seems to fix it for me, at least until a better fix is available. It also sped up scrolling in Firefox. However, blur is not available and crashes Compiz when enabled and a gnome-terminal is opened. Not sure if it's related.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Can confirm both bug and XAA fix, though that is not really a fix since I then lose video. Frustrating that even with an open source driver and hardware bought from dell exclusively for ubuntu compatibility, that compiz still won't work properly (ie, with functioning video). Hope someone gets this figured out soon. EXA is also very slow, particularly in firefox, as noted in a separate issue.

[Alex Wauck (awauck)]

My understanding is that EXA needs TTM in order to perform well. Since the released version of the Intel DRM module does not have TTM yet, we can't get good performance with EXA and will not by the time Hardy is released. It seems that Fedora 9 (which will be released around the same time as Hardy) will try to include xorg 1.5, but they will have to contribute a lot of effort to the development. If 1.5 is released in time for Hardy and includes the parts we need, this bug might be fixable. Currently, though, it doesn't look too hopeful.

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

I have the same issue on my Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with Intel X3100 graphics card. I installed Hardy Alpha 3, which enabled Compiz by default, which works fine except for window borders. I have applied all updates to date.

I consider this slightly ugly, but preferable to Metacity.

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

This can be mitigated (ugliness vastly reduced but still not right) by doing System - Preferences - Advanced Desktop Effects Settings - Window Decoration and then turning off shadows with:

Shadow Radius: 0.1 (small as possible)
Shadow Windows: none

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

Selecting the Mist theme (System - Preferences - Appearance) further mitigates this issue.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

The EXA performance issue is already reported as bug177492. The XAA video issue is also known and reported separately, but is set as a WONTFIX by upstream - they will only support EXA.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

I've looked at the drawing-artefact of the shadow and my best guess is that it is a texture-coordinate mixup of the XRender-related EXA-drawing. It looks like some texture-coordinate "index" is offset by one in regards to the corresponding quad-vertex. Each shadow-texture is turned clock-wise by 90 degrees.

What could be the cause for the window-border itself to be messed up I currently do not know.

That's the best hint I can give right now to anyone being more familiar with the codebase of intel's driver.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

Just to add another thought to my guess before...

It also could be a transposed matrix of the texture-coordinates causing this issue.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I've been able to reproduce this issue, and have a proposed fix posted to xorg mailing list

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Don't know if this is exactly the right logic, but it appears to fix the issue for me.

[Fred (frederic-lespez)]

The path proposed by Brice Harrington works : No more badly drawn window shadows :-)
Running Hardy Alpha 3 (with all updates) on an Intel Mobile GM965 chipset.
Thanks Bryce.

[tommaso gardumi (tommaso-gardumi)]

i have the same problem running hardy last alpha with updates... how can i use the patch?

[Fred (frederic-lespez)]

@tommaso gardumi :
You have to rebuild the package with the patch.
Or you can use the one I have rebuilt (for Hardy I386 with the latest updates). But I can only guarantee you that it works for me.
You can find here :
http://c.chez.fred.free.fr/xserver-xorg-video-intel_2.2.0.90-2ubuntu2.1_i386.deb

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Glad to know the patch worked; I've been running it as well on a 965 laptop. Thanks for posting a deb Fred.

However, I think we're going to take a different approach with 965 for hardy, since EXA is causing a variety of other issues on it. I'll leave this bug open though, in case others have this particular config and want to fix their borders.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I've got a better fix for this by switching to the greedy pixmap migration heuristic, which resolves this and several other problems. It's packaged and tested, and is in the process of being uploaded.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

the greedy pixmap has been enabled in xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.2.0.90-2ubuntu6. Changelog:

xserver-xorg-video-intel (2:2.2.0.90-2ubuntu6) hardy; urgency=low

  * Add 06_xaa_as_default_except_i965.patch to switch us back to XAA by
    default for intel chipsets for performance reasons, except for i965
    which does not work as well with XAA (Xv video doesn't display
    properly.) This patch essentially just reverts upstream's 'Default to
    EXA' patch, and adds a special case i965 to allow it to use EXA.

 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:27:18 -0800

xserver-xorg-video-intel (2:2.2.0.90-2ubuntu5) hardy; urgency=low

  * Add 05_intel_exa_force_greedy.patch to force use of greedy mode on
    i965 hardware. (closes LP: #177492, #148247, #152206)

 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:48:02 -0800

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

This now appears to be totally, utterly fixed in Ubuntu Hardy with all updates as of 2008-02-22 (xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.2.0.90-2ubuntu7) on the Intel X3100 (965), eg. my Dell Inspiron 1520.

Notably:

* Shadows look correct on windows in Compiz

* Video runs both windowed and full-screen in Compiz totally smooth without jerkiness

* No extra configuration required in xorg.conf

* Is it my imagination or is 3D just smoother and faster in general? Eg. no jerkiness/tearing on Compiz cube anymore.

* Again, is it my imagination or is text scrolling now smoother and faster in general? Eg. no jerkiness in Firefox anymore.

However a new bug has been discovered:

* No simple, obvious way to remotely buy Bruce Harrington a pint

[Amit Bhutani (amit.bhutani)]

> However a new bug has been discovered:
> * No simple, obvious way to remotely buy Bruce Harrington a pint
Instead of paypal'ing Bryce for a pint, I think the more suitable reward for Bryce (from Dell) is that he gets to keep the 1420 for his ongoing testing of Hardy :-)

[mexlinux (mcanedo)]

Intel X3100 (965) Dell XPS M1330
When I installed Hardy alpha 6 it was working perfect.
Today updates brought this bug.

[mexlinux (mcanedo)]

Disregard my previous comment, more updates where applied and it's solved again.

[p.becks (p-becks3)]

Hello,

I´ve got a Toshiba Tecra A9 (laptop) with an intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller. (Ubuntu HH, up-to-date). My graphics are not normal in (for instance) Open Arena/Alien Arena (unfinished floors/strange lines). On the other hand, Compiz works fine. (cube and effects) I wonder what´s wrong?

[p.becks (p-becks3)]

ps: I run Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 i386

[Andrew Oakley (andrew-aoakley)]

p.becks - Thank-you for taking the time to report this bug and making Ubuntu better.

The problem you are reporting is not related to this Compiz bug.

Your problem appears to be similar to Bug #205328 . Could you post there please?

[Timothy R. Chavez (timrchavez)]

The bug task for the somerville project has been removed by an automated script. This bug has been cloned on that project and is available here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1306057