[gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[Peter Humphrey]

I've broken this out from the thread it appeared in, Problems with Xinerama 
after upgrade to Plasma (KDE5):

On Friday 16 Sep 2016 11:18:18 I wrote:

--->8

> I upgraded yesterday from 5.7.4 to 5.7.5. I hoped the problem I have had
> been fixed, but no. If I switch desktops too many times, or too often or
> something, the desktop becomes unusable until I reboot (I haven't tried
> just restarting xdm). It flickers rapidly, bits of one desktop are shown
> in the middle of another or on a blank background, and it's hard to see
> just which is the currently active desktop.
> 
> This may be a bad interaction with the xorg-driver for my AMD GPU, which
> has only been on the market for about a year. Though
> sys-firmware/amdgpu-ucode hasn't changed since June.

I found from Xorg.0.log that X11 wasn't finding an evdev module, even though 
I had INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" in make.conf. So I added USE=evdev to dev-
qt/qtgui* and that created the module, even though kensington@gentoo said it 
had nothing to do with it.

I still get the rapid flickering and general confusion though, which is 
cured by logging out and in again.

* That was the only relevant package to have such a USE flag, according to 
"equery h -p evdev".

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[J. Roeleveld]

On Friday, September 23, 2016 09:13:00 AM Peter Humphrey wrote:
> I've broken this out from the thread it appeared in, Problems with Xinerama
> after upgrade to Plasma (KDE5):
> 
> On Friday 16 Sep 2016 11:18:18 I wrote:
> 
> --->8
> 
> > I upgraded yesterday from 5.7.4 to 5.7.5. I hoped the problem I have had
> > been fixed, but no. If I switch desktops too many times, or too often or
> > something, the desktop becomes unusable until I reboot (I haven't tried
> > just restarting xdm). It flickers rapidly, bits of one desktop are shown
> > in the middle of another or on a blank background, and it's hard to see
> > just which is the currently active desktop.
> > 
> > This may be a bad interaction with the xorg-driver for my AMD GPU, which
> > has only been on the market for about a year. Though
> > sys-firmware/amdgpu-ucode hasn't changed since June.
> 
> I found from Xorg.0.log that X11 wasn't finding an evdev module, even though
> I had INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" in make.conf. So I added USE=evdev to dev-
> qt/qtgui* and that created the module, even though kensington@gentoo said
> it had nothing to do with it.

I have the following:
$ grep INPUT /etc/portage/make.conf                                                                                                                                                                    
INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse joystick"

My qtgui doesn't have this USE-flag set.

According to my X-logs ( /var/log/Xorg.0.log ) it does find the evdev-module.

> I still get the rapid flickering and general confusion though, which is
> cured by logging out and in again.

I just tested on my desktop by madly switching desktops for 2 minutes using 
the keyboard bindings (CTRL + F1..4) and didn't see this happening.

> * That was the only relevant package to have such a USE flag, according to
> "equery h -p evdev".

Same on my system.
(Not counting games-emulation/dolphin :) )

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[Mick]

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On Friday 23 Sep 2016 10:36:23 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Friday, September 23, 2016 09:13:00 AM Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > I've broken this out from the thread it appeared in, Problems with
> > Xinerama
> > after upgrade to Plasma (KDE5):
> > 
> > On Friday 16 Sep 2016 11:18:18 I wrote:
> > 
> > --->8
> > 
> > > I upgraded yesterday from 5.7.4 to 5.7.5. I hoped the problem I have had
> > > been fixed, but no. If I switch desktops too many times, or too often or
> > > something, the desktop becomes unusable until I reboot (I haven't tried
> > > just restarting xdm). It flickers rapidly, bits of one desktop are shown
> > > in the middle of another or on a blank background, and it's hard to see
> > > just which is the currently active desktop.
> > > 
> > > This may be a bad interaction with the xorg-driver for my AMD GPU, which
> > > has only been on the market for about a year. Though
> > > sys-firmware/amdgpu-ucode hasn't changed since June.
> > 
> > I found from Xorg.0.log that X11 wasn't finding an evdev module, even
> > though I had INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" in make.conf. So I added USE=evdev to
> > dev- qt/qtgui* and that created the module, even though kensington@gentoo
> > said it had nothing to do with it.
> 
> I have the following:
> $ grep INPUT /etc/portage/make.conf
> INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse joystick"

Do you need "keyboard mouse joystick" if you have evdev set?

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Re: Madly flickering display

[Kai Krakow]

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Am Fri, 23 Sep 2016 19:11:33 +0100
schrieb Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>:

> On Friday 23 Sep 2016 10:36:23 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > On Friday, September 23, 2016 09:13:00 AM Peter Humphrey wrote:  
> > > I've broken this out from the thread it appeared in, Problems with
> > > Xinerama
> > > after upgrade to Plasma (KDE5):
> > > 
> > > On Friday 16 Sep 2016 11:18:18 I wrote:
> > >   
>  [...]  
> > >   
>  [...]  
> > > 
> > > I found from Xorg.0.log that X11 wasn't finding an evdev module,
> > > even though I had INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" in make.conf. So I added
> > > USE=evdev to dev- qt/qtgui* and that created the module, even
> > > though kensington@gentoo said it had nothing to do with it.  
> > 
> > I have the following:
> > $ grep INPUT /etc/portage/make.conf
> > INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse joystick"  
> 
> Do you need "keyboard mouse joystick" if you have evdev set?

Keyboard and mouse work with only "evdev" set. I'm not sure about
joystick, I still have to try. My INPUT_DEVICES is currently set to
"evdev joystick".

-- 
Regards,
Kai

Replies to list-only preferred.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Fri, 23 Sep 2016, Peter Humphrey wrote:
>I've broken this out from the thread it appeared in, Problems with Xinerama 
>I found from Xorg.0.log that X11 wasn't finding an evdev module, even though 
>I had INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" in make.conf. So I added USE=evdev to dev-
>qt/qtgui* and that created the module, even though kensington@gentoo said it 
>had nothing to do with it.

Do you have x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev installed?

# equery files  x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev |grep '\.so'
/usr/lib64/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so

That's the 'evdev' module that your X doesn't find.

-dnh

-- 
"I'm nobody's puppet!"    -- Rygel XIV

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Madly flickering display

[Mick]

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On Friday 23 Sep 2016 21:11:12 Kai Krakow wrote:
> Am Fri, 23 Sep 2016 19:11:33 +0100
> 
> schrieb Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>:
> > On Friday 23 Sep 2016 10:36:23 J. Roeleveld wrote:

> > > I have the following:
> > > $ grep INPUT /etc/portage/make.conf
> > > INPUT_DEVICES="evdev keyboard mouse joystick"
> > 
> > Do you need "keyboard mouse joystick" if you have evdev set?
> 
> Keyboard and mouse work with only "evdev" set. I'm not sure about
> joystick, I still have to try. My INPUT_DEVICES is currently set to
> "evdev joystick".

evdev is quite mature so it should work on its own without joystick, but you 
can always fine tune it by adding your own configuration in 
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 23 Sep 2016 22:30:55 David Haller wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Fri, 23 Sep 2016, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >I've broken this out from the thread it appeared in, Problems with
> >Xinerama I found from Xorg.0.log that X11 wasn't finding an evdev
> >module, even though I had INPUT_DEVICES="evdev" in make.conf. So I added
> >USE=evdev to dev- qt/qtgui* and that created the module, even though
> >kensington@gentoo said it had nothing to do with it.
> 
> Do you have x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev installed?
> 
> # equery files  x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev |grep '\.so'
> /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so
> 
> That's the 'evdev' module that your X doesn't find.

I have now, since adding that USE flag. I'll have to remove it and recompile 
to complete the check.

-- 
Rgds
Peter

Re: [gentoo-user] Madly flickering display

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday 23 Sep 2016 10:36:23 J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On Friday, September 23, 2016 09:13:00 AM Peter Humphrey wrote:
--->8
> > I still get the rapid flickering and general confusion though, which is
> > cured by logging out and in again.
> 
> I just tested on my desktop by madly switching desktops for 2 minutes
> using the keyboard bindings (CTRL + F1..4) and didn't see this happening.
> > * That was the only relevant package to have such a USE flag, according
> > to "equery h -p evdev".

I can't yet prove it, but I think I know the culprit: BOINC manager. If I 
don't run it, I get all my desktops running properly, but if I do, the 
window manager gets confused about which desktop is on display and tries to 
display bits of several of them, overlapping, missing, showing through, 
flickering, you name it. The bug persists even if I shut down boincmgr 
before the problem appears.

It may have something to do with focus stealing, because I had to raise the 
prevention setting one or two notches to be able to switch away from 
boincmgr's desktop. If it is so, I suppose it's a consequence of coding for 
Windows with only a single desktop in the entire known universe.

-- 
Rgds
Peter