[i945gm] Video corruption when disabling internal monitor

Here is a long-exposure image of the problem in action, after setting the external monitor's resolution to 1152x864 (far short of the native 1600x1200 res, hence the black border). As it's a long exposure, it's a good approximation of the visual chaos, but hard to see what's actually going on.

Here is a short-exposure image of the problem in action, after setting the external monitor's resolution to 1152x864. Being a short-exposure image, it's harder to see the image, but if you crank the brightness up, you can see the "jaunty-issues.txt" Vim tab in which I was keeping notes about my experimentation, and down the bottom left you can see a few yellow "e/st]$" from my bash prompt.

Here is a short-exposure image of the problem in action, after setting the external monitor's resolution to 1152x864. Being a short-exposure image, it's harder to see the image, but if you crank the brightness up, you can see the "jaunty-issues.txt" Vim tab in which I was keeping notes about my experimentation, and down the bottom left you can see a few yellow "e/st]$" from my bash prompt.

I re-enabled the internal display then changed the external monitor's resolution to 1152x864, and since the internal display was enabled this time it worked. This image is mostly interesting so you can see where the previous screens were getting their various garbage.

Here is a fragment of my Xorg.0.log file, generated as follows:

 - Set the resolution to 1024x768, took a copy of the log.
 - Set the resolution to 1152x864, waited a second for the problem to kick in, took a copy of the log.
 - Diffed the two copies of the log, extracted the extra lines and wrote them to a new file.

A side note: the closest existing bug seems to be bug 316000, but this bug is distinct because this bug never manifests like that bug's screenshot, and this bug never manifests when both screens are enabled, while that bug only manifests if both screens are enabled.

I guess I should also mention that although I'm running the 2.7.0 Intel driver from the x-updates PPA, I experienced the same behaviour with stock Jaunty and with Intrepid.

[This is an automatic notification.]

A new major version of the -intel driver is now available in Karmic.

This version includes a major reworking of the acceleration
architecture, which resolves a huge number of issues. We do not know
whether it resolves the issue you reported.

Would you mind testing Karmic Alpha-2 and seeing if it is still a
problem? CD ISO images are available here:

  http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/

If the issue can still be reproduced on karmic, please report here with
your findings, and attach a fresh Xorg.0.log from your test, and we will
be able to forward the bug upstream.

Otherwise, if the bug no longer exists in Karmic, let us know that as
well.

In the off chance you encounter different bugs while attempting to test
Karmic, please report those as new bug reports.

I burned the Karmic Koala Alpha 2 64-bit desktop image to a CD-RW, booted off it, and tried reproducing the problem using the steps in comment 0. The exact same behaviour described there is still present.

It has occurred to me that the 'safe' resolution of 1024x768 may merely be the largest of the resolution my two displays have in common, rather than a maximum pixel-count limit or something.

I discovered a presumably unrelated problem that if I boot Karmic while the external monitor is connected, X eventually freezes and the computer needs to be hard-booted. Unfortunately, because I was booting off a CD, rebooting erased all the log files and I do not have sufficient information to file a bug.

As requested, I have attached the Xorg.0.log file that was created while I was reproducing the bug.

Thanks for testing

I happened to be looking through bugs.freedesktop.org and I noticed a bug that sounds very much like this one:

    https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22264

I added a comment mentioning this bug.

According to the upstream bug, this is fixed by a recent kernel commit, so moving over to the linux kernel.

Looks like the patch is already in the Karmic kernel. Marking this Fix Released. Thanks.

ogasawara@emiko:~/ubuntu-karmic$ git log -p dff33cfcefa31c30b72c57f44586754ea9e8f3e2
commit dff33cfcefa31c30b72c57f44586754ea9e8f3e2
Author: Jesse Barnes <email address hidden>
Date: Tue Jul 14 10:15:56 2009 -0700

    drm/i915: FIFO watermark calculation fixes

    I discovered several bugs in the FIFO code that was recently applied.
    Some of them fell into the "how did this ever work" category, since in
    some cases we were using the wrong FIFO size values, and the
    calculations ended up being way off.

    This patch fixes all the bugs I found, and works well on my GM45, 915GM
    and 855GM test machines; but as usual with these sorts of patches
    broader testing is definitely requested (in particular this patch
    affects 830, 845 and 865 for which I don't have test hardware).

    Overall, the patch clarifies the watermark calculation function by
    adding some comments and debug info, and making the variable names a
    bit clearer. The "get FIFO size" portion of the code has also been
    corrected, so we should be able to properly detect the FIFO allocations
    for each pipe, for use in the watermark calculation.

    Signed-off-by: Jesse Barnes <email address hidden>
    Signed-off-by: Eric Anholt <email address hidden>

With final karmic release (upgraded from jaunty) i still have the problem on my macbook2,1when disabling the internal monitor.

With final karmic release (installed from scratch) i still have the problem on my macbook2,1 when disabling the internal monitor.

I still get this periodically on my macbook on Karmic final.

I have found the solution to this tiring problem. I am running the final Ubuntu 9.10 on a MacBook 2,1 and I can successfully fix this issue with a 100% success.

You need to do the following (remember to disable mirrored monitor first):
1. Plug in your external monitor
2. Start your MacBook and start boot into Ubuntu
3. Close the lid of your MacBook
4. You have now booted in and logged in (the flickering is now present)
5. Now, restart your machine and boot into Ubuntu (DO NOT OPEN MACBOOK LID!!)
6. Your now booted into Ubuntu again, the flickering is gone!

This I am able to do with success.

I have an SyncMaster 226BW and my MacBook is a revision 2,1.

I hope this helps others as well as it helped me!

I, too, still have the problem with karmic final, upgraded from jaunty. I guess I can try a live cd tonight.

Still having the problem with lucid.

FWIW, it seems to finally be fixed for me in Maverick (although I had to use the xorg-edgers ppa because of bug 619663).

re-marking as Fix Released. Please file a new bug if you feel you have a similar issue.

Thanks!

~JFo