[Mobility 9000] screen flickers only if text tty entered (radeon)

[Misha Koshelev]

I "upgraded" to Gutsy by doing a clean install a couple of days ago and now have noticed a strange screen flickering bug.
I have a radeon mobility 9000 on a Dell Inspiron 600m, and did not have this problem previously with Feisty Fawn.

The bug is screen flickering in text consoles _and_ X. Interestingly, though, this bug does not occur if I boot into splash and then
it goes straight to X. I am able to log on and use desktop effects and such without any flicker. However, the moment it has to
switch to a text tty/vt, whether through a Ctrl-Alt-Fn or after I log out when X restarts, it starts flickering and the flicker makes
everything pretty much unusable (well quite annoying at least). I tried booting with vga=normal but that doesn't change anything. No splash on boot doesn't help.

I believe this has something to do with the new text tty changes in Gutsy vs Feisty, but am not sure exactly what these are, so if someone has some advice maybe on something I can do to try to mess with these that would be great (I'm pretty sure it's not
an X issue per se b/c it does not seem to happen the first time X starts and I log on after splash; oh yeah also it does _not_ happen when BIOS is starting and in the initial splash; however after we go to tty I can't get the flicker to stop).

Thanks a lot
Misha

[Luigi Toscano (ltosky)]

Created an attachment (id=11439)
X.org log (the switches from and to the vt has been emphasized)

[agd5f (agd5f)]

Can you try again with ati git master?

[Luigi Toscano (ltosky)]

I compile (almost) daily the git master since the randr-1.2 branch was merged into it, and the problem is still there :( when X.org starts, the system is not able anymore to switch to "text" mode.

[agd5f (agd5f)]

Any change with current ati git?

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

I "upgraded" to Gutsy by doing a clean install a couple of days ago and now have noticed a strange screen flickering bug.
I have a radeon mobility 9000 on a Dell Inspiron 600m, and did not have this problem previously with Feisty Fawn.

The bug is screen flickering in text consoles _and_ X. Interestingly, though, this bug does not occur if I boot into splash and then
it goes straight to X. I am able to log on and use desktop effects and such without any flicker. However, the moment it has to
switch to a text tty/vt, whether through a Ctrl-Alt-Fn or after I log out when X restarts, it starts flickering and the flicker makes
everything pretty much unusable (well quite annoying at least). I tried booting with vga=normal but that doesn't change anything. No splash on boot doesn't help.

I believe this has something to do with the new text tty changes in Gutsy vs Feisty, but am not sure exactly what these are, so if someone has some advice maybe on something I can do to try to mess with these that would be great (I'm pretty sure it's not
an X issue per se b/c it does not seem to happen the first time X starts and I log on after splash; oh yeah also it does _not_ happen when BIOS is starting and in the initial splash; however after we go to tty I can't get the flicker to stop).

Thanks a lot
Misha

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

So this is a regression. I can fix this (no more flicker on changing to a console/tty; then flicker in both text consoles and X when changing back and even if you restart X) by installing 1:6.6.3-2ubuntu6 in gutsy so this must be a regression in 1:6.7.195-1ubuntu2 (I had to restart the computer to get rid of the flicker after installing but then no more flicker after changing to consoles; yay!).

Anything else I should try?

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

lspci -nn | grep VGA

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] [1002:4c66] (rev 01)

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

Here are the logs from both versions. In both I basically log in, switch to VT 1 (in which case the flicker starts, yes in the VT 1 in the new version but not the old of xserver-xorg-video-ati), then switch back to VT 7.

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

Sorry I was pretty sure I attached this yesterday.

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

Tried more stuff:

* This version 1:6.7.196+git20071210-0ubuntu0tormod still has the bug
* Adding either a Disable "glx" or Disable "dri" or both to a Section "Modules" (and rebooting with each change to make sure) does not fix the bug (and I checked in /var/log/Xorg.0.log to make sure the modules were really disabled)
* Took a picture of the problem on a plain vanilla X (of course this is after a change to TTY) this is best visible:
      You can see a bunch of horizontal lines on the monitor, these are basically moving up and down all the time, so I'm assuming
      its an issue where when we change to a text VT some vertical refresh rate register is changed incorrectly and never changed back.

Hope this helps.
Misha

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

Interesting fix I discovered quite serendipitously. Probably ends up resetting whatever register is not reset otherwise:

xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600
xrandr --output S-video --mode 800x600

_immediately_ fixes the X flicker (but not the one in the VT if you switch to a VT) even with nothing hooked
up to S-video. I will see if I can narrow down any easier xrandr fixes/workarounds for this bug.

Misha

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

Ok update about my xrandr update this effect is not permanent although lasts for quite a bit. Maybe flicker starts again after display gets powered off (by ACPI) not sure though of exact timing.

Misha

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Thanks for your report. Can you also try a test package from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XorgOnTheEdge ? There were some changes lately that might have fixed this.

[agd5f (agd5f)]

*** Bug 13917 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

I tried
xserver-xorg-video-ati_6.7.197+git20080103.c6522088-0ubuntu0tormod_i386.deb
which I believe is the latest. I believe it looked somewhat better (albeit hard to judge b/c I am at work with very
different lighting), but definitely I think the text mode looked better although there was still a little flicker there.

However, when going back to X from text mode the vertical flicker was still noticeable, which I also checked with the
plain X command after killing gdm.

Let me know if and which details more you need with this new package.

Misha

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Could you please report this on bugs.freedesktop.org ? Please attach the log from running with the new package.

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

Thanks for the attention. Upstream bug:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13917

I checked at home and the flicker is no better with that package btw. In fact I can clearly see it the second I enter text VT for
the first time.

Misha

[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.

[agd5f (agd5f)]

closing due to lack of feedback.

[Luigi Toscano (ltosky)]

Sorry, I forgot to "ping" this bug.

The issue is still there (Xorg 7.4 from debian experimental packages, radeon driver from today's git).

The messages written in Xorg.0.log during vt switch are slightly different from the ones I reported:

Changing to VT:

(II) AIGLX: Suspending AIGLX clients for VT switch
(II) RADEON(0): RADEONRestoreMemMapRegisters() :
(II) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION : 0x1fff0000 0xd3ffd000
(II) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION : 0x27ff2000
finished PLL2
finished PLL1
Entering Restore TV
Restore TV PLL
Restore TVHV
Restore TV Restarts
Restore Timing Tables
Restore TV standard
Leaving Restore TV

================
Restoring from (broken) VT:

(II) Open ACPI successful (/var/run/acpid.socket)
(II) AIGLX: Resuming AIGLX clients after VT switch
(II) RADEON(0): Dynamic Clock Scaling Enabled
init memmap
init common
init crtc1
init pll1
restore memmap
(II) RADEON(0): RADEONRestoreMemMapRegisters() :
(II) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION : 0xd3ffd000 0x1fff0000
(II) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION : 0xffffffc0
restore common
restore crtc1
restore pll1
restore LVDS
(II) RADEON(0): [RESUME] Attempting to re-init Radeon hardware.
(WW) RADEON(0): DRI init changed memory map, adjusting ...
(WW) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION was: 0xd3ffd000 is: 0xd3ffd000
(WW) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION was: 0xffffffc0 is: 0xffffffc0
(II) RADEON(0): RADEONRestoreMemMapRegisters() :
(II) RADEON(0): MC_FB_LOCATION : 0xd3ffd000 0xd3ffd000
(II) RADEON(0): MC_AGP_LOCATION : 0xffffffc0
(II) Configured Mouse: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded
(--) Synaptics Touchpad touchpad found
(II) Configured Mouse: ps2EnableDataReporting: succeeded

[Misha Koshelev (misha680)]

You know I don't know how much of a real bug this is anymore.

I _am_ using tormodvolen's ppa but I switched the motherboard on thsi compute rand haven't noticed it. Then again, don't use it much anymroe.

Misha

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Okay, sounds like in any case it'd be difficult to reproduce the conditions to do troubleshooting, so we can close it as hw-unavailable I guess. But feel free to re-open if you'd like to continue troubleshooting it.

[Alexdeucher (alexdeucher)]

Is this still an issue with kms or newer versions of the driver?

[Luigi Toscano (ltosky)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Is this still an issue with kms or newer versions of the driver?

Yes, it is (sorry for my lack of updates), but with KMS is different. I'm currently using Debian Squeeze:
xserver-xorg-video-radeon 1:6.13.1-2
xserver-xorg 1:7.5+7
xserver-xorg-core 2:1.7.7-8
libdrm2 2.4.21-1~squeeze3
linux-image-2.6.32-5-686 2.6.32-26 (it contains drm from 2.6.34)

When KMS is turned on (default behaviour), the flickering stars when (I think) the kernel module is loaded (I don't know if radeon or drm) and when Xorg starts, the flickering is fixed (just like Xorg change some values) and virtual consoles work again.
How can I help to debug this issue?

[Julien Cristau (jcristau)]

> --- Comment #9 from Luigi Toscano <email address hidden> 2010-10-28 13:57:05 PDT ---
> linux-image-2.6.32-5-686 2.6.32-26 (it contains drm from 2.6.34)
>
from .33 (plus various fixes) actually.

[Ajax-a (ajax-a)]

Mass closure: This bug has been untouched for more than six years, and is not
obviously still valid. Please reopen this bug or file a new report if you continue to experience issues with current releases.