Annoying Screen Flickering with Intel GM45 Chipset

[PJK]

Okay. So I just installed the updated 3.3.4 kernel, uname -srv returns:

Linux 3.3.4-030304-generic #201205011755 SMP Tue May 1 21:56:36 UTC 2012

First reboot got me black screen with cursor instead of Login screen, so I got into the tty console, restarted the kdm service, Login window showed, logged in, during the splash screen loading animation, the screen went black and displayed some text for a few milliseconds, I wasn't able to catch anything written, then when it promptly returned, I had no flickering!

Success I thought! No flickering! So I just rebooted to make sure everything is in fact good..... guess what? Yet another failure. This version of (K)Ubuntu is just cursed I'm thinking.

Also, I updated the 1st post on the thread to include problem occurrences.

[PJK]

Yeah TechSpot is an awesome technology news site that hasn't been corrupted by commercialization. They might not be as big as some of the contenders, but I like it that way, it simply means that they're writing is biased by "donations". As far as the drivers go, like I said, I changed back to non-SNA drivers for now because they didn't fix the flicker anyway. I will probably get around to it and post it on Launchpad tomorrow.

[SteveRiley]

I see the same goofy menu thing, only with the SNA driver, and only in Chromium.

There is a hidden page in Chrom(e)ium that exposes quite a number of internal settings. Go to chrome://flags. Once there, experiment with some of the graphics-related settings.

(Interesting set of articles on that web site... /me heads over there now to check them out.)

[PJK]

Okay. I took a screenshot to show you guys the menu bug. Maybe it should get submitted somewhere as well?

[PJK]

Okay, did as you suggested.

apt-cache policy xserver-xorg-video-intel

xserver-xorg-video-intel:
  Installed: 2:2.19.0+git20120501.7e09babb-0ubuntu0sarvatt2~sna~precise
  Candidate: 2:2.19.0+git20120503.f4c34e9a-0ubuntu0sarvatt~precise
  Version table:
     2:2.19.0+git20120503.f4c34e9a-0ubuntu0sarvatt~precise 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
 *** 2:2.19.0+git20120501.7e09babb-0ubuntu0sarvatt2~sna~precise 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/sarvatt/intel-sna/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:2.17.0-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages

So it looks like I'm using the new (old) driver. I'm getting some rendering problems though. For example, I just opened a menu and the text for the options listed wasn't visible until I hovered over the option, that's never happened before. Ohh, and flickering is still here. :mad: So I will go back to the newly released Xedgers driver.

PS: Since I now have Synaptics which is better than Muon Package Manager, should I remove the Muon Package Manager?

[Mr_Bumpy]

Yeah, that's because yesterday the xorg-edgers PPA was updated to a newer Intel driver, but the SNA version hasn't been updated accordingly. Since your system considers the xorg-edgers version of the Intel driver to be newer, you will need to force it to use the older version in the intel-sna repository. Since Muon Package Manager's "force version" functionality isn't working, you will need to use a different program. I use Synaptic (sudo apt-get install synaptic). Open Synaptic, search for "xserver-xorg-video-intel", select the package, go to the Package menu and click "Force Version..." Select the version of the driver with "~sna~precise" at the end and click the "Force Version" button. Now click the "Apply" button to apply the changes and follow the remaining prompts. If you determine this driver solves the problem, you can disable the xorg-edgers and intel-sna repositories if you don't want to be prompted to upgrade the driver all the time. You can optionally lock the package at its current version (do this in Muon, not Synaptic).

I'm going away for the weekend, so I look forward to hearing how this works out for you when I get back

[PJK]

Well now that's weird. When I booted up my laptop today, I automatically did apt-get update and dist-upgrade, I believe it downloaded some Xedgers drivers, then I proceeded to view the forum, added the repo by running the commands written by Mr_Bumpy, and it didn't download any new drivers.

apt-cache policy readout:

xserver-xorg-video-intel:
  Installed: 2:2.19.0+git20120503.f4c34e9a-0ubuntu0sarvatt~precise
  Candidate: 2:2.19.0+git20120503.f4c34e9a-0ubuntu0sarvatt~precise
  Version table:
 *** 2:2.19.0+git20120503.f4c34e9a-0ubuntu0sarvatt~precise 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:2.19.0+git20120501.7e09babb-0ubuntu0sarvatt2~sna~precise 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/sarvatt/intel-sna/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
     2:2.17.0-1ubuntu4 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages

[PJK]

Sorry for my lack of presence guys, I'm gonna try this new SNA driver now. And yeah, thanks for clearing that up, Mr_Bumpy when you posted it I thought the driver was only for the newer Sandy Bridge chipsets, but since you're running an older one too, I'll give it a shot.

[SteveRiley]

That's what I thought, too, but then I read that SNA was being enabled for older chipsets as well, and I did notice a difference on my i915GM system. The SNA driver fixed a long-standing glyph corruption bug on i915GM when coming out of suspend.

Good to know this, thanks much.

[Mr_Bumpy]

Ah, right, I forgot about that one. Worth a shot, although I think the only difference between the two drivers is that the SNA one actually enables the SNA features of those chips. PJK's CPU/graphics isn't Sandy Bridge.

That's what I thought, too, but then I read that SNA was being enabled for older chipsets as well, and I did notice a difference on my i915GM system. The SNA driver fixed a long-standing glyph corruption bug on i915GM when coming out of suspend.

[SteveRiley]

Ah, right, I forgot about that one. Worth a shot, although I think the only difference between the two drivers is that the SNA one actually enables the SNA features of those chips. PJK's CPU/graphics isn't Sandy Bridge.

[Mr_Bumpy]

Okay, after doing some bug filing of my own, I've discovered that the best place to report bugs in the X server or its drivers (such as xserver-xorg-video-intel) is the freedesktop.org bugzilla. Sorry for all the runaround... I'm still learning this stuff myself

Anyway, there is one more Intel driver that would be worth trying. Intel is working on a new acceleration method called SNA (Sandy Bridge New Acceleration). It's still being developed, but is already quite good, IMO. I only noticed one very minor drawing glitch with the edges of scrollbars in applications using oxygen-gtk (reported here). The SNA-enabled driver may, *may* just resolve your flickering issues. To try it, add the intel-sna ppa and dist-upgrade:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sarvatt/intel-sna && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If it doesn't work, then a simple ppa-purge will revert you back to the previous version:

sudo ppa-purge -p intel-sna sarvatt

Hope this helps!

[Mr_Bumpy]

Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps it would be best to submit an Ubuntu bug to Launchpad first.

[Mr_Bumpy]

It's most likely either the Intel drivers or the kernel mode setting (KMS) code in the kernel that is causing the problem. You may want to try reporting the bug on the kernel bug tracker. I did this a year ago with a font corruption bug that was affecting my laptop, and it has recently been fixed (see the bug report here). Of course, if it isn't a kernel issue then they may redirect you to report the bug elsewhere (does anybody know where to report Intel driver bugs?).

[PJK]

I'll admit we've tried so many iterations that perhaps I've overlooked a step but...

* When you had "nomodeset" specified, your computer was falling back to the VESA driver. We saw that in the first Xorg log you posted. I would have realized this immediately if I had known that the Intel drivers require modesetting now.

* When you removed the VESA driver, you had already removed "nomodeset," so the Intel driver was loading again.

* When you put "nomodeset" back, but hadn't yet re-installed the VESA drivers, X was failing to load.

Think I got that right...

Precisely. Which gives us another clue, if the VESA driver with "nomodeset" didn't reproduce the flicker, does this mean it's the Intel drivers at fault?