Screen flickers as though it has the wrong refresh rate for a few seconds

i see a lot of hard/soft resetting to ata2 in your dmesg, but it seems unrelated
what is your hardware?

I am running on Dell Inspiron 6000 with the Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (Intel) and a Pentium M processor 1.60GHz (Intel).

Tell me if you need any other hardware information.

could this be compiz related? do you have special effects enabled? if yes, try disabling them and tell me if the problem disappeared...

I did a

$ metacity --replace

to disable compiz and tried closing and opening the display, with the same effect as before. Detecting the display also still had the same effect as before.

I noticed something else:

The problem only occurs if I am logged in. If I lock the screen first, there is no flickering.

I called dmesg once, then closed and opened the screen to cause the problem, then called dmesg again. There were no new messages the second time I called it, so whatever is causing the problem did not cause a driver to output an error message.

provisionally assigning to the xserver-xorg-video-intel source package

Please attach the output of `lspci -vvnn`, and attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from after reproducing this issue. If you've made any customizations to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf please attach that as well.

This is the requested output of `lspci --vvnn`

This is the requested /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from after reproducing the issue.

This is the /var/log/Xorg.0.log file from before reproducing the issue in case you have to diff them.

Collin, confirmed is the correct status for this bug report, but please don't change the status of your bug report...

[This is an automatic notice.]

We'd like to forward your bug upstream, however upstream requires
that you first test it against their newer driver code.

To save you the effort of building the driver from source, we've built
packages for the driver and its new dependencies.

So you have a couple options:

 1. Download and test .debs for intrepid, from:
     https://edge.launchpad.net/~intel-gfx-testing/+archive

 -or-

 2. Download and test the Jaunty alpha-2 (or newer) Live CD,
     (which includes a beta of the new xserver 1.6 as well).
     See http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/ for ISOs

Thanks ahead of time! You can simply reply to this email to report your
findings.

P.S., if you wish to forward your bug upstream yourself, please follow
these directions to do so:
  http://intellinuxgraphics.org/how_to_report_bug.html

I added the repositories you pointed to and did an upgrade and a reboot, but the bug is still exactly the same.

Oh, by the way Dimitrios, Bryce changed the status to confirmed, but thanks for the heads up anyway. I'm still kind of new here and things like this are appreciated.

Thanks for testing; this should go upstream. Setting to Triaged for now.

I will be giving this computer away soon as I am getting a new one. As such, I will probably be unable to help with this bug any longer since the new computer will have an entirely different graphics card. It has been a pleasure working with you.

That said, I should be able to continue reproducing this bug until about two weeks from today (Monday, 2008-12-22).

Collin, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Since the HW is only going to be available for a short while, I've forwarded the bug upstream, to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19241 - please subscribe to that bug report in case upstream needs further information or wishes you to test something.

Also, one other thing that would be helpful, is if you could burn the Jaunty Alpha-2 LiveCD, boot that, and see if you can reproduce the issue. It has a newer version xserver, and would be good to know whether it already has a fix for this problem. Thanks ahead of time.

Colin, upstream has a question; it would be great if you could pop onto that bug report to provide the info.

I've got the same laptop/chipset/problem as Colin. Is there anything that I can do to help this situation get resolved? As it is I rolled back to 8.04 because it was kind of annoying, but would be happy to help out.

In the upstream bug, Collin reports he no longer has the hardware so cannot do the testing requested by upstream; thus we're closing this one as unable to investigate further.

If anyone with this exact hardware who definitely has the identical issue wishes to pursue it further, please follow up on the upstream bug and then reopen this bug.

I believe I might have the same hardware in a Dell Inspiron 1300, but I don't get this issue closing and opening the lid. I do get flicker other times, such as when I'm switching back from a full screen game, and I'm running fully updated Intrepid without any modification to Xorg.

I'm attaching my lspci -vvnn and /var/log/Xorg.0.log. If someone can confirm that I have the exact same issue as Collin, I'll try giving upstream a hand.

I have the same problem with my laptop which has the same chipset. When Gnome starts up there are also horizontal lines flashing across the screen for a few seconds. The flickering also occurs when some applications start. e.g. Totem and anything ran in Wine. I also did not have this problem in any other version of Ubuntu and I do not have compiz enabled. A friend of mine also recently upgraded to Intrepid on a similar laptop and experienced exactly the same problem.

From your description, Don, it seems as though you have the exact same problem I had, especially because the problem occurred whenever you ran wine (I had the same problem; I might have forgotten to mention this before).

I suggest that you go here: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19241 and reopen the bug with your comment. It has been closed for now because nobody seemed to have the problem anymore.

I just did a brand new install of Kubuntu 8.10 on a friend's Sony Vaio laptop with the Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller. The flicker problem began immediately after the installation. I'm attaching the output of lspci -vvnn.

As a follow-up to my previous comment, I found a solution at http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Intrepid: Turn off "Detecting RANDR (monitor) changes" in Ubuntu/Kubuntu under Settings->Advanced Settings->Service Manager. Problem resolved for me.