[gentoo-user] Problem with X fonts when restarting from hibernate-to-disk

[gentoo-user] Problem with X fonts when restarting from hibernate-to-disk

[Walter Dnes]

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  I'm not sure where to look.  I've recently started having font
problems when restarting my PC from hibernate-to-disk.  Here are the
symptoms...
* I hibernate my home desktop machine when not using it
* when I restart from hibernate, the following problems *SOMETIMES* occur
* existing GUI windows are OK
* launching new programs or dialogues (YES/NO, Apply/Cancel, etc) seems
  to have zero-size fonts
* shutting down X and restarting it solves the problem, but if I have to
  go through that, it's almost as cumbersome as "sudo /usr/sbin/poff"
  and booting fresh

  I'm attaching a partial screen-capture of an existing gnumeric
spreadsheet and a new one launched after waking up from hibernation.
The tracker.gnumeric spreadsheet that was opened before hibernation is
OK.  The Book1.gnumeric spreadsheet was opened after waking up from
hibernate.  Note the missing "File Edit View etc" text menus.  The
location and formula areas are very thin, compared to the same areas in
tracker.gnumeric.  This happens to Opera, AbiWord, etc.  I did this
partial screencapture with Gimp.  I left it open before hibernating.
The radiobuttons and icons were OK in the screencapture dialogue, but
the fonts were screwed up on the dialogue.  I managed to do the
screencapture from memory of which button was which.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>

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Re: [gentoo-user] Problem with X fonts when restarting from hibernate-to-disk

[YoYo Siska]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 07:26:58PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   I'm not sure where to look.  I've recently started having font
> problems when restarting my PC from hibernate-to-disk.  Here are the
> symptoms...
> * I hibernate my home desktop machine when not using it
> * when I restart from hibernate, the following problems *SOMETIMES* occur
> * existing GUI windows are OK
> * launching new programs or dialogues (YES/NO, Apply/Cancel, etc) seems
>   to have zero-size fonts
> * shutting down X and restarting it solves the problem, but if I have to
>   go through that, it's almost as cumbersome as "sudo /usr/sbin/poff"
>   and booting fresh
> 
>   I'm attaching a partial screen-capture of an existing gnumeric
> spreadsheet and a new one launched after waking up from hibernation.
> The tracker.gnumeric spreadsheet that was opened before hibernation is
> OK.  The Book1.gnumeric spreadsheet was opened after waking up from
> hibernate.  Note the missing "File Edit View etc" text menus.  The
> location and formula areas are very thin, compared to the same areas in
> tracker.gnumeric.  This happens to Opera, AbiWord, etc.  I did this
> partial screencapture with Gimp.  I left it open before hibernating.
> The radiobuttons and icons were OK in the screencapture dialogue, but
> the fonts were screwed up on the dialogue.  I managed to do the
> screencapture from memory of which button was which.

Might be that something happens to X's DPI settings during the
suspend/resume...
You can try to comaper the outputs of 
xdpyinfo | egrep "dimensions|resolution"
and maybe 
xrandr
befor and after the suspend.

Also all the applications you metion are GTK V(well, I'm not sure about
opera...), does the same happen to qt, qk, plain xlib applications also?

yoyo

Re: [gentoo-user] Problem with X fonts when restarting from hibernate-to-disk

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:26 PM, Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:
>  I'm not sure where to look.  I've recently started having font
> problems when restarting my PC from hibernate-to-disk.  Here are the
> symptoms...
> * I hibernate my home desktop machine when not using it
> * when I restart from hibernate, the following problems *SOMETIMES* occur
> * existing GUI windows are OK
> * launching new programs or dialogues (YES/NO, Apply/Cancel, etc) seems
>  to have zero-size fonts
> * shutting down X and restarting it solves the problem, but if I have to
>  go through that, it's almost as cumbersome as "sudo /usr/sbin/poff"
>  and booting fresh
>
>  I'm attaching a partial screen-capture of an existing gnumeric
> spreadsheet and a new one launched after waking up from hibernation.
> The tracker.gnumeric spreadsheet that was opened before hibernation is
> OK.  The Book1.gnumeric spreadsheet was opened after waking up from
> hibernate.  Note the missing "File Edit View etc" text menus.  The
> location and formula areas are very thin, compared to the same areas in
> tracker.gnumeric.  This happens to Opera, AbiWord, etc.  I did this
> partial screencapture with Gimp.  I left it open before hibernating.
> The radiobuttons and icons were OK in the screencapture dialogue, but
> the fonts were screwed up on the dialogue.  I managed to do the
> screencapture from memory of which button was which.
>
> --
> Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
>

In addition to YoYo's comments it may also be graphics driver problem.
There were some comments on the Intel Gfx list this morning about
certain chips losing bit settings in hibernation. Possibly it's
something like that.

I don't know what hardware you're using but if the problem occurs
across lots of different app types, and because you used the words
'have started having font problems' implying maybe you didn't earlier,
then look into newer/older drivers to bisect the problem.

- Mark

[gentoo-user] [SOLVED] Problem with X fonts when restarting from hibernate-to-disk

[Walter Dnes]

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 02:36:35PM +0100, YoYo Siska wrote

> Might be that something happens to X's DPI settings during the
> suspend/resume...
> You can try to comaper the outputs of 
> xdpyinfo | egrep "dimensions|resolution"
> and maybe 
> xrandr
> befor and after the suspend.

  Thanks for the pointer.  It turns out it's not related to hibernate,
but rather to an interaction with xrandr resolution-switching.  I've
recently discovered a streaming website that shows old cartoons and
other shows ( www.liketelevision.com ).  I have a 24" LCD display
(1920x1200) but the website displays less than 640x480.  No problem, I
said to myself.  I cobbled together a few scripts.  The first one for
switching to 640x480 mode... (I call it "640x480")

#!/bin/bash
xrandr -s 640x480
xrandr --output HDMI1 --panning 1920x1200+0+0

...and a second one for 720x400... (I call it "720x400"

#!/bin/bash
xrandr -s 720x400
xrandr --output HDMI1 --panning 1920x1200+0+0

...and finally one to switch back to "normal" mode... (I call it "1920")

#!/bin/bash
xrandr -s 1920x1200

  The problem started at about the same time I discovered
www.liketelevision.com and began switching resolutions to watch it.
Here's a test...

#Get values before any switching
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ xdpyinfo | egrep "dimensions|resolution"
  dimensions:    1920x1200 pixels (508x317 millimeters)
  resolution:    96x96 dots per inch

#Switch to 640x480
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ 640x480 
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ xdpyinfo | egrep "dimensions|resolution"
  dimensions:    1920x1200 pixels (1268x792 millimeters)
  resolution:    38x38 dots per inch

#Switch to 720x400
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ 720x400 
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ xdpyinfo | egrep "dimensions|resolution"
  dimensions:    1920x1200 pixels (3801x2376 millimeters)
  resolution:    13x13 dots per inch

#Switch back to 1920x1200
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ 1920
waltdnes@i3 ~ $ xdpyinfo | egrep "dimensions|resolution"
  dimensions:    1920x1200 pixels (3801x2376 millimeters)
  resolution:    13x13 dots per inch

  Here's a gem from the xrandr man page.  Note the part that I have
emphasized...

--fbmm widthxheight
       Sets the reported values for the physical size  of  the screen.
       ***NORMALLY, XRANDR RESETS THE REPORTED PHYSICAL SIZE VALUES***
       to keep the DPI constant.  This overrides that computation.


  The solution to my problem is to include the 2 lines...

xrandr -fbmm 508x317
xrandr --dpi 96

...at the end of all 3 scripts.  This forces the screensize and DPI back
to their original values, and X is happy, and fonts fit properly.  You
learn something new every so often.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>