Notification and similar dialogs are displaying corrupted after update on Karmic

Here is a screenshot of the brightness display.

Jamal Fanaian - I've forwarded this bug upstream to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23668 - please subscribe yourself to this bug, in case they need further information or wish you to test something. Thanks ahead of time!

It turns out the issue is related to the new acceleration method in Karmic. Adding the following to the Device section fixes it.

Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"

Now I wonder, is this because of my video card or just the current state of ATI drivers? If so, will it be resolved? Should I file a new bug?

Thanks!

The issue gets resolved when I set the AccelMethod to EXA. The only problem is that if I try to enable Compiz, the computer completely crashes. Compiz ran in Jaunty, but poorly.

These same problems are experienced with ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY, can be fixed by switching to EXA.

BTA switching to EXA severly affects X' 2D performance, at least on M6... so it actually might be better to stay with XAA and disable Ubuntu notifications in favor of GNOME defaults.

It certainly kills performance for me. glxgears goes down from 1200 to 30 !!!
(I know that it is not a scientific measure, but it does reflect the dramatic change of feel.)
maybe there is another option which would fix the problem without killing performance.

b.t.w. there is another bug which seems to be the same as this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/440904

As I had the same problems I tried to modify my xorg.conf. What helps was to disable DRI2 and enable DRI. My working xorg.conf for my radeon 7000 (M6LY):

Section "Device"
 Identifier "Configured Video Device"
 Option "AGPMode" "4"
 Option "AGPSize" "32"
 Option "DRI" "true"
 Option "DRI2" "false"
EndSection

RenderAccel is XAA per default.

Working means that notifications and compiz work as expected.

Hmmm... does not work after another reboot... so just forget ist :-/

I am experiencing this bug on karmic with ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 Graphics Controller with 32 MB of DDR video RAM on a Compaq Evo n610c. I have problems with the notifications and with System Monitor

After living with this problem for a long time and a few hours of playing around I found a fix. I created an xorg.conf file and added one line to the Device section changing to EXA instead of XAA, leaving all defaults the same. Here's the important part:

Section "Device"
        Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
        [...]
EndSection

Why does this work? For some cards like some models of Mobility Radeon the developers decided to change the default from EXA to XAA for performance reasons. Most other ATI cards default to EXA, but some default to XAA. Even if you think you know what it should default to, double check it. Changing the AccelMethod fixed my problems.

Thanks Grant, this fixed the notification issue on my Thinkpad X31 laptop (ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY graphics).

Comment 13 also fixed my problem, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-applet/+bug/467749, which I incorrectly assigned to NM. The computer is a Lenovo R51, http://www.charlescurley.com/Lenovo.R51.html. The display does seem a bit slower, but not enough to be a problem.

I had Compiz enabled when I tested this change, and it seemed to work fine for the few minutes I had it enabled. I then turned off Compiz, and then could not turn it back on ("no drivers"). That's fine by me, but folks who want their eye candy may have problems.

Sounds like bug 426582.

I also have an old Dell latitude laptop with a 1GHz Celeron and 512 MB ram with ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY video and with a clean install of 32 bit karmic, I could not run system-monitor. It would open a window with random horizontal lines. Also the GL screensavers were very slow and the cosmos screen saver also exhibited the random horizontal lines with no visible image.

glxgears showed a frame rate of 1500fps. I know it's not a benchmarking program...

I created an xorg.conf and this is what is in it:

Section "Device"
        Identifier "ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY"
        Driver "ati"
        BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
        Option "AGPMode" "4"
        Option "AGPSize" "64" # default: 8
        Option "RingSize" "8"
        Option "BufferSize" "2"
        Option "EnablePageFlip" "True"
        Option "EnableDepthMoves" "True"
 Option "SWcursor" "off" #Faster than default (on)
 Option "AccelMethod" "EXA" #or XAA, which is the default and may be more stable
 Option "DynamicClocks" "on"
 Option "BIOSHotkeys" "on"
        Option "RenderAccel" "true" # Enables hardware acceleration
        Option "DynamicClocks" "on" # Adds clock scalability / power management for the video card
EndSection

After restarting x and also after trying a reboot, I still have reliable suspend/resume, all the video artifact has vanished, system-monitor works properly GL screensavers run pretty smoothly and glxgears now shows 2400fps.

I do notice if I have more than 1 window open, there is a little sluggishness if you try to move them, but I'm not sure if that was there before.

I have a Compaq Evo N600c with ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY 32MB running with xubuntu 9.10 and can confirm that AccelMethod EXA fixes the drawing problems with the notifications.
The big problem is that my system is still not stable with radeon module, i.e. after some time of 2-D usage (30min-2h) the system locks up (mostly soft-lockup). I used openSuse 11.1/2 before and could still get kernel debug messages/sysrq key responses via network debug. (in opensuse 11.0 I used fglrx, which was stable). So I use vesa most of the time, which is quite slow. To watch a movie or sth., I save my work and switch to the radeon module.
To test if, an especially how stable the system is (for ex. with different xorg.conf options), I start etracer (extrem tux racer). It reliably locks up the system (didnt with fglrx some years ago). With no option quite fast in the startup menu, with EXA the menus seem more or less stable, though have drawing errors.
I would be glad if someone can help me and tell me what and how to debug / whether to file a new bug report.

In trying to implment the solution in comment #13, I tried to generate aan xorg.conf file, since none currently exists on my system, with sudo Xorg -configure. What I got in return was

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
 If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
 and start again.

Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
  at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.

 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

What am I doing wrong here?

Hi ret3
You should do it without X running. You can try single-user mode or create xorg.conf by hand and then restart X.

Could someone explain please why this has been marked invalid? The problem exists and while there is a work around it would be better to have the fixed setting as the default configuration.