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David Ljung Madison Stellar
Asked: 2020-01-27 15:22:33 +0800 CST

i915 Whiskey Lake GT2 has graphics corruption, sometimes crashes/hangs Xorg

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I've installed Ubuntu on a new laptop, the LG Gram 17 which has Whiskey Lake 3x8 GT2 graphics.

Some applications are causing corruption with triangle segments that are blacked out. Screenshot attached of an application that reproduces the issue 100% of the time. I also see the issue with VLC, but only when it switches to fullscreen - but not if I make a window of the same size but not in fullscreen mode. Interestingly enough I just tested tuxracer, and that works fine.

Furthermore, I have the possibly related issue that sometimes opening a new window (even with something as innocuous as xterm) will crash/hang X. The screen will go black and only show a blinking cursor, but the children processes will continue running. I can switch to a text virtual terminal and the machine is still running fine, but I can't get X to display again.

Notice the triangles!

I am running Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS with HWE enabled - so I'm on kernel 5.3.0-26.

The LG Gram requires the kernel option "pci=nommconf" - don't know if that effects graphics.

I've tried adding i915.blacklist=yes to my kernel boot options, but I am not convinced it actually did anything since it seems that i915 was still enabled. I've also tried:

  • i915.enable_fbc=0 (which I verified was actually disabled)
  • intel_iommu=on,igrfx_off (not convinced this actually disabled i915)

Any suggestions of what else I can do to figure out what is happening?

My video setup is:

# lshw -c video | grep 'configuration'
    configuration: depth=32 driver=i915 latency=0 mode=2560x1440 visual=truecolor xres=2560 yres=1440

# lshw -c video
  *-display
     description: VGA compatible controller
     product: Intel Corporation
     vendor: Intel Corporation
     physical id: 2
     bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
     logical name: /dev/fb0
     version: 00
     width: 64 bits
     clock: 33MHz
     capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
     configuration: depth=32 driver=i915 latency=0 mode=2560x1440 visual=truecolor xres=2560 yres=1440
     resources: iomemory:600-5ff iomemory:400-3ff irq:177 memory:6022000000-6022ffffff memory:4000000000-400fffffff ioport:2000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

Here's the lspci info for the graphics:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 3ea0 (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: LG Electronics, Inc. Device 0325
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 0
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 177
        Region 0: Memory at 6022000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Region 2: Memory at 4000000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Region 4: I/O ports at 2000 [size=64]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [40] Vendor Specific Information: Len=0c <?>
        Capabilities: [70] Express (v2) Root Complex Integrated Endpoint, MSI 00
                DevCap: MaxPayload 128 bytes, PhantFunc 0
                        ExtTag- RBE+
                DevCtl: Report errors: Correctable- Non-Fatal- Fatal- Unsupported-
                        RlxdOrd- ExtTag- PhantFunc- AuxPwr- NoSnoop-
                        MaxPayload 128 bytes, MaxReadReq 128 bytes
                DevSta: CorrErr- UncorrErr- FatalErr- UnsuppReq- AuxPwr- TransPend-
                DevCap2: Completion Timeout: Not Supported, TimeoutDis-, LTR-, OBFF Not Supported
                DevCtl2: Completion Timeout: 50us to 50ms, TimeoutDis-, LTR-, OBFF Disabled
        Capabilities: [ac] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
                Address: fee00018  Data: 0000
        Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915

Update to the X "crash" - I've discovered that if I go to a text terminal I can restart my window manager and then I can get back to at least part of my desktop, though the window decorator (emerald) and my panels (gnome-panel and cairo-dock) are gone, though if I do a few restarts on emerald and the window manager and gnome-panel, they eventually re-appear. Is there a log somewhere that might be able to tell me what is crashing?

xorg graphics i915 screen-corruption

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    After a full day of bisecting the difference between a new install and my setup of Ubuntu dating back over a decade, I finally found the culprit, cairo-dock.

    cairo-dock is corrupting the graphics of not just Sidequest, but also Steam, and presumably anything else that renders in the same way.

    cairo-dock has the ability to start up with the opengl backend or "cairo backend" whatever that is, but both of them corrupt the images for Sidequest/Steam.

    What's strange is that this hasn't always been the case, since I've used Steam before, and this person has evidently used both without graphics corruption:

    https://classicforum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=7960.0

    Interestingly it only happens if cairo-dock is started first. If I restart cairo-dock when I launch sidequest or steam, everything seems fine. That ain't right.

    Anyways, time to start looking at other dock launchers.

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