Xorg is unusably slow and flickery

Bug #531590 reported by Tommy Nevtelen
54
This bug affects 9 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-intel

After an update from Karmic to Lucid alpha3 Xorg became unusable.
I'm on an Acer 1810TZ with Intel 4500hd graphics.

Xorg is generally slow and uses 50-65% cpu on an average when it should idle. The screen flickers and I think that the wrong refreshrate is set somehow.

Xorg.0.log is being filled with the following lines a couple of times a second.
(II) intel(0): EDID vendor "AUO", prod id 8284
(II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
(II) intel(0): Modeline "1366x768"x0.0 65.50 1366 1390 1406 1406 768 770 774 776 -hsync -vsync (46.6 kHz)

This is spewed out by dmesg:
[ 4680.010670] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
[ 4680.180661] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
[ 4680.343652] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
[ 4680.513419] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
[ 4680.690676] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
[ 4680.861993] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid

More info in the attachement

Revision history for this message
Tommy Nevtelen (dal) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr) wrote :

This bug seems to be about some program that probes the monitor for the EDID information repeatedly. We have had several of those in the past, but usually it would be limited to once per 1-10 sec, which is bad enough. The challenge here is to find which program probes EDID. First, try gnome instead of KDE or the other way around. Then try failsafe login. Try to kill services, etc.

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Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

Yeah, sorry this is not a bug in X.org but in some other client application that is doing too much Randr polling. Untargeting from -intel.

affects: xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu) → ubuntu
Revision history for this message
James P. Carter (jpcarter) wrote :

I have changed the package selection to xserver-xorg-video-intel.

affects: ubuntu → xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu)
tags: added: gloam
Revision history for this message
Iain Farrell (iain-farrell) wrote :

Having the same issue, are you having it only with 64-bit or have you tried the 32-bit install?

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Iain Farrell (iain-farrell) wrote :

Answered my own question. Happens with both :(

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Tommy Nevtelen (dal) wrote :

This ppa fixed my problems. So it may be related to KMS and DRM.

https://edge.launchpad.net/~apw/+archive/red

Revision history for this message
Iain Farrell (iain-farrell) wrote :

Sadly that didn't work for me. Tried using .15 instead of .16 version of Kernel. Is there anything else I should install as part of using that ppa?

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Iain Farrell (iain-farrell) wrote :

Apologies all that _did_ work as long as I use .32.16

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Tommy Nevtelen (dal) wrote :

Well this bug is fixed in .16. probably because of the new DRM-backport.

Changed in xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu):
status: New → Fix Released
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Sancho (sancho-sancho) wrote :
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Sancho (sancho-sancho) wrote :

The kernel upgrade did not work for me - I installed the ppa kernel 2.6.35-22-generic-pae and the defect remains.
It works a bit different for me - after the boot, everything is OK. As soon as I close the laptop lid and re-open it, the whole screen starts to flicker in random intervals (aprox. 1 in 3-4 seconds) and the log is full of "Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid" errors.

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vasiliy-balakirev (vasiliy-balakirev) wrote :

I have found a stable method to reproduce the bug on my system.
I start:

env WINEPREFIX="/home/balakirev/.wine" wine "C:/Program Files/Evernote/Evernote/Evernote.exe"

then got flicker and that in syslog:

Nov 14 05:12:57 balakirev-laptop acpid: client 1423[0:0] has disconnected
Nov 14 05:12:57 balakirev-laptop acpid: client connected from 1423[0:0]
Nov 14 05:12:57 balakirev-laptop acpid: 1 client rule loaded
Nov 14 05:12:57 balakirev-laptop kernel: [ 992.173811] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Nov 14 05:13:21 balakirev-laptop kernel: [ 1015.467516] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Nov 14 05:13:21 balakirev-laptop kernel: [ 1015.754956] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
Nov 14 05:13:24 balakirev-laptop kernel: [ 1018.536508] Skipping EDID probe due to cached edid
...

I have messages from acpid about client and from kernel about EDID every time when I start wine and every time I got flicker.
It can be somehow connected to the reasons of a bug and will help in it fixing.
This bug is very similar to bug#595773.

Revision history for this message
david.barbion (david-barbion) wrote :

Same problem here. Running brand new maverick installation.
/var/log/Xorg.0.log:
[ 452.160] (II) PM Event received: Capability Changed
[ 452.160] I830PMEvent: Capability change
[ 452.416] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "LCD", prod id 21328
[ 452.416] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
[ 452.416] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0 65.00 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (48.4 kHz)
in loop after closing/opening the laptop lid.

The computer starts responding very slowly, the mouse cursor freezes for a quarter of second every 4 or 5 seconds... grey blocks appear randomly on screen.

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