[gentoo-user] Weird graphical glitches after world update

[gentoo-user] Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Mateusz Kowalczyk]

Greetings,

I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
screen weren't updating, namely in urxvt and emacs. In urxvt, my shell
prompt seems to not render the cursor and often keeps the letters I
remove still on the prompt (only graphically, they aren't actually
there). This is extremely annoying.

It's also terrible in emacs: cursor sometimes doesn't get rendered and I
get tons of artefacts from different buffers when I switch or from text
I was editing. You can find an example image of such glitches in emacs
at [1]. This is absolutely tragic for me as I spend majority of my time
in emacs. I'd like to note that I'm running emacs in a graphical frame
and not in a terminal.

I'm unsure whether this is the case in my other machines as they are
headless and don't even have X.

The issue is weird however: firefox and thunderbird are fine, they don't
suffer any such glitches. I can also make the glitches go away by
‘refreshing’ my screen with use of xrandr, such as telling xrandr to
change my settings to what they currently are, which should technically
be a no-op but well, it seems that it does it anyway.

Oh, I should mention that I did not update my kernel
Linux misaki 3.9.0-rc6 #1 SMP Tue Apr 9 10:51:07 BST 2013 i686 Intel(R)
Core(TM)2 Duo CPU L7700 @ 1.80GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

I am truly lost as to how to troubleshoot this. I provide links to some
of my system information below:

http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/misc/genlop
http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/misc/emergeinfo

Please feel free to request any information. I hope someone can aid me
as this basically renders my shell and emacs useless and they are the
two things I absolutely need. Even getting my logs was difficult with
such broken setup.

Thanks.

[1]: http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/images/badrendering.png
-- 
Mateusz K.

[gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[walt]

On 11/21/2013 07:10 AM, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
> screen weren't updating,

Sounds like a video driver problem.  Are you using one of the proprietary
video drivers (ati-drivers, nvidia-drivers, etc)?

If yes, you could try:

#eselect opengl list
Available OpenGL implementations:
  [1]   ati *
  [2]   xorg-x11

My ati-drivers need the proprietary version of opengl and sometimes this
setting is wrong after updating the opensource mesa package.

Otherwise I'd just try re-emerging your video drivers as an experiment :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Alan McKinnon]

On 21/11/2013 17:10, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
> screen weren't updating, namely in urxvt and emacs. In urxvt, my shell
> prompt seems to not render the cursor and often keeps the letters I
> remove still on the prompt (only graphically, they aren't actually
> there). This is extremely annoying.
> 
> It's also terrible in emacs: cursor sometimes doesn't get rendered and I
> get tons of artefacts from different buffers when I switch or from text
> I was editing. You can find an example image of such glitches in emacs
> at [1]. This is absolutely tragic for me as I spend majority of my time
> in emacs. I'd like to note that I'm running emacs in a graphical frame
> and not in a terminal.


A quick note to say that you are not alone, I get this as well since
about 6 weeks ago (a ~amd system). So it's not something you and just
you managed to do, I got it as well.

In my case it's as if the system's idea of what is on the screen is off
by one row of pixels. I get a stray row of dots at the top of lines that
correspond to the risers of glyphs on the previous line, and new
underscores don't show up until I enter a newline.

This is a mostly KDE system using konsole, so it's not the terminal
emulator or editor that's the root cause.




> 
> I'm unsure whether this is the case in my other machines as they are
> headless and don't even have X.
> 
> The issue is weird however: firefox and thunderbird are fine, they don't
> suffer any such glitches. I can also make the glitches go away by
> ‘refreshing’ my screen with use of xrandr, such as telling xrandr to
> change my settings to what they currently are, which should technically
> be a no-op but well, it seems that it does it anyway.
> 
> Oh, I should mention that I did not update my kernel
> Linux misaki 3.9.0-rc6 #1 SMP Tue Apr 9 10:51:07 BST 2013 i686 Intel(R)
> Core(TM)2 Duo CPU L7700 @ 1.80GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
> 
> I am truly lost as to how to troubleshoot this. I provide links to some
> of my system information below:
> 
> http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/misc/genlop
> http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/misc/emergeinfo
> 
> Please feel free to request any information. I hope someone can aid me
> as this basically renders my shell and emacs useless and they are the
> two things I absolutely need. Even getting my logs was difficult with
> such broken setup.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> [1]: http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/images/badrendering.png
> 


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Alan McKinnon]

On 21/11/2013 22:48, walt wrote:
> On 11/21/2013 07:10 AM, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
>> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
>> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
>> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
>> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
>> screen weren't updating,
> 
> Sounds like a video driver problem.  Are you using one of the proprietary
> video drivers (ati-drivers, nvidia-drivers, etc)?
> 
> If yes, you could try:
> 
> #eselect opengl list
> Available OpenGL implementations:
>   [1]   ati *
>   [2]   xorg-x11
> 
> My ati-drivers need the proprietary version of opengl and sometimes this
> setting is wrong after updating the opensource mesa package.
> 
> Otherwise I'd just try re-emerging your video drivers as an experiment :)
> 
> 

As replied earlier, I get this too. My video driver is radeon, I don;t
have the ati proprieatry drivers installed:

# eselect opengl list
Available OpenGL implementations:
  [1]   xorg-x11 *


remerging drivers has no effect


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Dale]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On 21/11/2013 17:10, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
>> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
>> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
>> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
>> screen weren't updating, namely in urxvt and emacs. In urxvt, my shell
>> prompt seems to not render the cursor and often keeps the letters I
>> remove still on the prompt (only graphically, they aren't actually
>> there). This is extremely annoying.
>>
>> It's also terrible in emacs: cursor sometimes doesn't get rendered and I
>> get tons of artefacts from different buffers when I switch or from text
>> I was editing. You can find an example image of such glitches in emacs
>> at [1]. This is absolutely tragic for me as I spend majority of my time
>> in emacs. I'd like to note that I'm running emacs in a graphical frame
>> and not in a terminal.
>
> A quick note to say that you are not alone, I get this as well since
> about 6 weeks ago (a ~amd system). So it's not something you and just
> you managed to do, I got it as well.
>
> In my case it's as if the system's idea of what is on the screen is off
> by one row of pixels. I get a stray row of dots at the top of lines that
> correspond to the risers of glyphs on the previous line, and new
> underscores don't show up until I enter a newline.
>
> This is a mostly KDE system using konsole, so it's not the terminal
> emulator or editor that's the root cause.
>

Some may recall I have posted about similar issues in the past.  Heck, I
still do when I upgrade the drivers.  I'm stuck using a older driver but
still run into the issue every once in a while. 

The biggest giveaway for me is that my clock is stuck.  I have mine set
to show seconds and it either stops or the time sort of jumps several
seconds at a time. 

It's weird but as Alan said, it is not just you.  You got plenty of
company on this one. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

[gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[walt]

On 11/21/2013 01:38 PM, Dale wrote:
> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> On 21/11/2013 17:10, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
>>> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
>>> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
>>> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
>>> screen weren't updating, namely in urxvt and emacs. In urxvt, my shell
>>> prompt seems to not render the cursor and often keeps the letters I
>>> remove still on the prompt (only graphically, they aren't actually
>>> there). This is extremely annoying.
>>>
>>> It's also terrible in emacs: cursor sometimes doesn't get rendered and I
>>> get tons of artefacts from different buffers when I switch or from text
>>> I was editing. You can find an example image of such glitches in emacs
>>> at [1]. This is absolutely tragic for me as I spend majority of my time
>>> in emacs. I'd like to note that I'm running emacs in a graphical frame
>>> and not in a terminal.
>>
>> A quick note to say that you are not alone, I get this as well since
>> about 6 weeks ago (a ~amd system). So it's not something you and just
>> you managed to do, I got it as well.
>>
>> In my case it's as if the system's idea of what is on the screen is off
>> by one row of pixels. I get a stray row of dots at the top of lines that
>> correspond to the risers of glyphs on the previous line, and new
>> underscores don't show up until I enter a newline.
>>
>> This is a mostly KDE system using konsole, so it's not the terminal
>> emulator or editor that's the root cause.
>>
> 
> Some may recall I have posted about similar issues in the past.  Heck, I
> still do when I upgrade the drivers.  I'm stuck using a older driver but
> still run into the issue every once in a while. 
> 
> The biggest giveaway for me is that my clock is stuck.  I have mine set
> to show seconds and it either stops or the time sort of jumps several
> seconds at a time. 
> 
> It's weird but as Alan said, it is not just you.  You got plenty of
> company on this one. 

One other possibility is that xorg updated something that broke some
video drivers.  Maybe "qlop -l xorg" would give you a hint about when
your video problem first appeared?

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Mateusz Kowalczyk]

On 21/11/13 20:48, walt wrote:
> On 11/21/2013 07:10 AM, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
>> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
>> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
>> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
>> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
>> screen weren't updating,
> 
> Sounds like a video driver problem.  Are you using one of the proprietary
> video drivers (ati-drivers, nvidia-drivers, etc)?
> 
> If yes, you could try:
> 
> #eselect opengl list
> Available OpenGL implementations:
>   [1]   ati *
>   [2]   xorg-x11
> 
> My ati-drivers need the proprietary version of opengl and sometimes this
> setting is wrong after updating the opensource mesa package.
> 
> Otherwise I'd just try re-emerging your video drivers as an experiment :)
> 
> 

I have an intel 965GM and eselect opengl list only gives me xorg-x11.


I dug around a fair bit last night and found [1] which brought to my
attention that modesetting was not set up properly. Few kernel
compilations later, and my modesetting module now loads fine. While it
didn't make the issue go away for urxvt, my emacs is now usable again.
Woohoo, I can do things again! There's always eshell and ansi-term which
I can run in emacs so the crisis is at least somewhat averted while I
figure out a solution. I thought I'd share the link for all other
victims in hopes that it will help them.

Sorry all for late reply but I was shifting my e-mail around and didn't
notice the responses!

[1]: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-949946-start-0.html

-- 
Mateusz K.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:49:25 -0800, walt wrote:

> One other possibility is that xorg updated something that broke some
> video drivers.  Maybe "qlop -l xorg" would give you a hint about when
> your video problem first appeared?
> 
I'm seeing similar, but not identical issues, most annoying in the
message list in Claws Mail, which seem to be caused by
x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.906. Downgrading to the previous
version gets rid of the problem.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Programmer (n): A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing
with inanimate objects.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Khumba]

On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:39:03 +0000
Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:49:25 -0800, walt wrote:
> 
> > One other possibility is that xorg updated something that broke some
> > video drivers.  Maybe "qlop -l xorg" would give you a hint about when
> > your video problem first appeared?
> > 
> I'm seeing similar, but not identical issues, most annoying in the
> message list in Claws Mail, which seem to be caused by
> x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.906. Downgrading to the previous
> version gets rid of the problem.

Same problem here, running ~amd64, hit the problem when I upgraded
last Wednesday.  Ditto for Urxvt, Emacs, and Claws.  I tried downgrading
from x86-video-intel-2.99.906 to 2.99.905-r1 which fixed the glitch, but
then when I clicked on lists in Claws, X would randomly crash.

Maybe time to try downgrading more than just the video drivers; I also
upgraded other X packages at the time, including xorg-server.

Cheers,
Bryan

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Dale]

walt wrote:
> On 11/21/2013 01:38 PM, Dale wrote:
>> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>> On 21/11/2013 17:10, Mateusz Kowalczyk wrote:
>>>> Greetings,
>>>>
>>>> I spent a chunk of yesterday updating world on my machines (2 file
>>>> servers and 1 netbook) and with some effort, the updates went through. I
>>>> had to go out today so I rebooted my netbook and I started noticing
>>>> weird graphical glitches in certain applications, as if parts of the
>>>> screen weren't updating, namely in urxvt and emacs. In urxvt, my shell
>>>> prompt seems to not render the cursor and often keeps the letters I
>>>> remove still on the prompt (only graphically, they aren't actually
>>>> there). This is extremely annoying.
>>>>
>>>> It's also terrible in emacs: cursor sometimes doesn't get rendered and I
>>>> get tons of artefacts from different buffers when I switch or from text
>>>> I was editing. You can find an example image of such glitches in emacs
>>>> at [1]. This is absolutely tragic for me as I spend majority of my time
>>>> in emacs. I'd like to note that I'm running emacs in a graphical frame
>>>> and not in a terminal.
>>> A quick note to say that you are not alone, I get this as well since
>>> about 6 weeks ago (a ~amd system). So it's not something you and just
>>> you managed to do, I got it as well.
>>>
>>> In my case it's as if the system's idea of what is on the screen is off
>>> by one row of pixels. I get a stray row of dots at the top of lines that
>>> correspond to the risers of glyphs on the previous line, and new
>>> underscores don't show up until I enter a newline.
>>>
>>> This is a mostly KDE system using konsole, so it's not the terminal
>>> emulator or editor that's the root cause.
>>>
>> Some may recall I have posted about similar issues in the past.  Heck, I
>> still do when I upgrade the drivers.  I'm stuck using a older driver but
>> still run into the issue every once in a while. 
>>
>> The biggest giveaway for me is that my clock is stuck.  I have mine set
>> to show seconds and it either stops or the time sort of jumps several
>> seconds at a time. 
>>
>> It's weird but as Alan said, it is not just you.  You got plenty of
>> company on this one. 
> One other possibility is that xorg updated something that broke some
> video drivers.  Maybe "qlop -l xorg" would give you a hint about when
> your video problem first appeared?
>
>
>
>

In my case, it is the video drivers.  On another thread, someone else
has ran into a similar issue.  Also, I am one of those that does a
emerge -e world when in doubt.  Sometimes that works.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Andrew Tselischev]

On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 10:54:02AM -0800, Khumba wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:39:03 +0000
> Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:49:25 -0800, walt wrote:
> > 
> > > One other possibility is that xorg updated something that broke some
> > > video drivers.  Maybe "qlop -l xorg" would give you a hint about when
> > > your video problem first appeared?
> > > 
> > I'm seeing similar, but not identical issues, most annoying in the
> > message list in Claws Mail, which seem to be caused by
> > x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.906. Downgrading to the previous
> > version gets rid of the problem.
> 
> Same problem here, running ~amd64, hit the problem when I upgraded
> last Wednesday.  Ditto for Urxvt, Emacs, and Claws.  I tried downgrading
> from x86-video-intel-2.99.906 to 2.99.905-r1 which fixed the glitch, but
> then when I clicked on lists in Claws, X would randomly crash.
> 
> Maybe time to try downgrading more than just the video drivers; I also
> upgraded other X packages at the time, including xorg-server.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bryan
> 

I've had a similiar problem: X would randomly crash when I ran
Claws-Mail and cursor wasn't showing in Eclipse. The solution for me
was to downgrade to =x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.21.15 (currently
latest stable version).

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Khumba]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:39:52 +0400
Andrew Tselischev <andrewts@farlander.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 10:54:02AM -0800, Khumba wrote:
> > On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:39:03 +0000
> > Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:49:25 -0800, walt wrote:
> > > 
> > > > One other possibility is that xorg updated something that broke some
> > > > video drivers.  Maybe "qlop -l xorg" would give you a hint about when
> > > > your video problem first appeared?
> > > > 
> > > I'm seeing similar, but not identical issues, most annoying in the
> > > message list in Claws Mail, which seem to be caused by
> > > x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.99.906. Downgrading to the previous
> > > version gets rid of the problem.
> > 
> > Same problem here, running ~amd64, hit the problem when I upgraded
> > last Wednesday.  Ditto for Urxvt, Emacs, and Claws.  I tried downgrading
> > from x86-video-intel-2.99.906 to 2.99.905-r1 which fixed the glitch, but
> > then when I clicked on lists in Claws, X would randomly crash.
> > 
> > Maybe time to try downgrading more than just the video drivers; I also
> > upgraded other X packages at the time, including xorg-server.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Bryan
> > 
> 
> I've had a similiar problem: X would randomly crash when I ran
> Claws-Mail and cursor wasn't showing in Eclipse. The solution for me
> was to downgrade to =x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.21.15 (currently
> latest stable version).

Yes, this works, thanks!

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 16:25:01 -0800, Khumba wrote:

> > I've had a similiar problem: X would randomly crash when I ran
> > Claws-Mail and cursor wasn't showing in Eclipse. The solution for me
> > was to downgrade to =x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.21.15 (currently
> > latest stable version).  
> 
> Yes, this works, thanks!

Masking 2.99.906, which dropped me back to 2.99.905-r1, worked for me.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Committee (noun): A group of people spending hours taking minutes

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Weird graphical glitches after world update

[Khumba]

On Thu, 28 Nov 2013 01:16:41 +0000
Neil Bothwick <neil@digimed.co.uk> wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 16:25:01 -0800, Khumba wrote:
> 
> > > I've had a similiar problem: X would randomly crash when I ran
> > > Claws-Mail and cursor wasn't showing in Eclipse. The solution for me
> > > was to downgrade to =x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel-2.21.15 (currently
> > > latest stable version).  
> > 
> > Yes, this works, thanks!
> 
> Masking 2.99.906, which dropped me back to 2.99.905-r1, worked for me.

FWIW, staying fully ~amd64 and disabling XFCE's compositor also
fixes the problem here.