[vmwgfx] Login screen not refreshing properly on vSphere when WaylandEnable=false

[Hank Keanu]

1) The release of Ubuntu you are using
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS
Release: 20.04

2) The version of the package you are using,
gnome-shell:
  Installed: 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2
  Candidate: 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2
  Version table:
 *** 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 500
        500 mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://cn.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.36.4-1ubuntu1~20.04.2 500
        500 mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal-security/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/main amd64 Packages
     3.36.1-5ubuntu1 500
        500 mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt focal/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://cn.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages

3) What you expected to happen
The login screen can resize properly and all its widgets shows properly.

4) What happened instead
Login screen doesn't refresh properly when resize vShpere window, so that can't input username and password. And I found pressing Ctl-Alt-Tab can force the login screen refresh.
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.23
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
DisplayManager: gdm3
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.desktop.interface' b'scaling-factor' b'uint32 1'
 b'org.gnome.desktop.lockdown' b'disable-lock-screen' b'true'
 b'org.gnome.desktop.screensaver' b'idle-activation-enabled' b'false'
 b'org.gnome.desktop.screensaver' b'lock-enabled' b'false'
 b'org.gnome.desktop.session' b'idle-delay' b'uint32 0'
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-08-13 (641 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
Package: gnome-shell 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2 [modified: usr/lib/gnome-shell/libgnome-shell.so]
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.13.0-40.45~20.04.1-generic 5.13.19
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.36.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.2
Tags: focal
Uname: Linux 5.13.0-40-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: N/A
_MarkForUpload: True

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command only once, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

apport-collect 1973660

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport by using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please log into the VM and run:

  lspci -k > lspci.txt
  journalctl -b0 > journal.txt
  dpkg -l > packages.txt

and attach the resulting text files here.

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

apport information

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

apport information

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

apport information

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

apport information

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

Thanks for your guidance, Daniel!

Please find journal.txt,lspci.txt and packages.txt in the attachment.

[John Wolfe (johnwvmw)]

One thing that comes to mind is to check the VMs hardware configuration. The amount of memory available to the VM will affect the amount of memory that can be dedicated to the graphics display.

In my Workstation, the recommended minimum memory is 2 GB for my Ubuntu 20.04 guest
  - 2 virtual processors (1 core per processor)
  - graphics display will default to that currently configured for the host system (2560 x 1600 in my case)

If I reconfigure the VM with only 1 GB of memory, the desktop logon screen only displays a part of the full gdm3 desktop logon screen.

Try increasing the VMs virtual memory or use a specific display monitor resolution that works within the smaller virtual memory in use.

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

This issue seems not related to the resource of cpu and memory. The following is my VM current hardware configuration:

~# lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
Address sizes: 43 bits physical, 57 bits virtual
CPU(s): 8
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-7
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 1
Socket(s): 8
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 106
Model name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6330 CPU @ 2.00GHz
Stepping: 6
CPU MHz: 1995.312
BogoMIPS: 3990.62
Hypervisor vendor: VMware
Virtualization type: full
L1d cache: 384 KiB
L1i cache: 256 KiB
L2 cache: 10 MiB
L3 cache: 336 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-7
Vulnerability Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: VMX unsupported
Vulnerability L1tf: Not affected
Vulnerability Mds: Not affected
Vulnerability Meltdown: Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Vulnerability Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2: Mitigation; Enhanced IBRS, IBPB conditional, RSB filling
Vulnerability Srbds: Not affected
Vulnerability Tsx async abort: Not affected
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon nopl xtopology tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_
                                 freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault invpcid_single ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enha
                                 nced fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 invpcid avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb avx512cd avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xsaves arat pku ospke md_clear flush_l1d arch_capabilities

~# free -mh
              total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 47Gi 1.5Gi 39Gi 23Mi 5.6Gi 44Gi
Swap: 1.8Gi 0B 1.8Gi

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. This looks like a bug in the VMware Xorg graphics driver.

Strangely it does not appear your login screen is using Wayland when it should be default. So even the login screen will be victim to any bugs in the VMware Xorg graphics driver. Maybe check that you haven't accidentally set WaylandEnable=false in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf

Other than the above I can only suggest:

 (a) try changing the display controller type in the hypervisor; or

 (b) Ubuntu 22.04 which is the latest long term support release.

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

Yes, I intended to use Xorg by setting WaylandEnable=false in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf.
After I switched to Wayland, this problem disappeared.

Could you please give me some hints how to identify it's a bug in the VMware Xorg graphics driver?

Thanks!

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

> Could you please give me some hints how to identify it's a bug in the VMware Xorg graphics driver?

The hint was that it only happened on the one system I've ever seen that was using Xorg on VMware. :)

If the problem was more general than that then someone else would have reported it in the 2+ years since Ubuntu 20.04 was released. Although bug 1865963 might be the same issue, maybe?

[Hank Keanu (hkeanu)]

Thanks for your information, Daniel!

Then please feel free to close this issue.

Again, thanks for your prompt help!