Screen corruption: 8.6 and System Monitor (Ubuntu)

[Porter]

I'm having an odd screen corruption problem with Catalyst 8.6 that didn't occur under 8.5.

When I run the Gnome System Monitor utility (v2.22.1 under Ubuntu Hardy) and try to scroll in the process list or move the window, I get strange repeating screen corruption behind the active window, all over the screen. The corrupted areas include the title bar of the active window but not the main window area. From the pattern and repeated content, it looks as though the driver is trying to redraw the active window but is writing to the wrong locations on-screen.

Some of the corruption writes itself out eventually with manual GUI visual activity after closing System Monitor, but it persists in many areas that do not have interactive elements. Restarting X is the only way to clean it up once it starts.


This behavior does NOT occur when compiz is turned on. It only occurs in the standard 2D window manager (Metacity).


Any ideas, guys?

[Porter]

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

[Dandel]

i have encountered this bug, and it took me a while to figure out the fix... and here's what you do.

1. uninstall the fglrx Driver completely.
2. delete the contents of /etc/ati
3. reboot and then reinstall driver.
4. reboot again, and then enjoy.

[Porter]

i have encountered this bug, and it took me a while to figure out the fix... and here's what you do.

1. uninstall the fglrx Driver completely.
2. delete the contents of /etc/ati
3. reboot and then reinstall driver.
4. reboot again, and then enjoy.

What is that intended to accomplish? I deleted the contents of /etc/ati when I installed the driver manually two days ago.


I'll give it a try, though. Thanks for the suggestion.

[mtippett]

I'm having an odd screen corruption problem with Catalyst 8.6 that didn't occur under 8.5.

When I run the Gnome System Monitor utility (v2.22.1 under Ubuntu Hardy) and try to scroll in the process list or move the window, I get strange repeating screen corruption behind the active window, all over the screen. The corrupted areas include the title bar of the active window but not the main window area. From the pattern and repeated content, it looks as though the driver is trying to redraw the active window but is writing to the wrong locations on-screen.

Some of the corruption writes itself out eventually with manual GUI visual activity after closing System Monitor, but it persists in many areas that do not have interactive elements. Restarting X is the only way to clean it up once it starts.


This behavior does NOT occur when compiz is turned on. It only occurs in the standard 2D window manager (Metacity).


Any ideas, guys?

You didn't mention your hardware, I would expect a radeon 9x00 or X800 family. Most likely you have turned on TexturedXRender in xorg.conf from some other random web posting.

Remove it and you should be fine.

As has been communicated elsewhere, modifying configuration files by hand is not a recommended way of configurating the driver. The aticonfig or amdcccle are the two recommended ways of configuration.

TexturedXRender is a developmental feature that is not currently supported. As such it will regress on occasions.

Regards,

Matthew

[Porter]

You didn't mention your hardware, I would expect a radeon 9x00 or X800 family. Most likely you have turned on TexturedXRender in xorg.conf from some other random web posting.

Remove it and you should be fine.

As has been communicated elsewhere, modifying configuration files by hand is not a recommended way of configurating the driver. The aticonfig or amdcccle are the two recommended ways of configuration.

TexturedXRender is a developmental feature that is not currently supported. As such it will regress on occasions.

Regards,

Matthew

My card is a Mobility X1400 on a Lenovo Thinkpad T60. TexturedXRender is not on.

The "Device" section of my xorg.conf contains only:

[FONT="Courier New"]	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"[/FONT]

No extraneous options of any kind.

[Porter]

Any ideas? You still out there Matthew?

Thanks for your help by the way.

[bridgman]

I'm not sure if texturedxrender can be turned on by amdpcsdb, or how thoroughly aticonfig --initial scrubs the amdpcsdb contents, but that would be the next thing I would check.

[Porter]

Bridgman,

What's the procedure to wipe all settings and start totally fresh? Apparently uninstalling the previous driver and installing the new one may not have been enough... is there a way to do that easily?

I saw the post above about deleting the contents of /etc/ati but I wasn't sure if that was an ATI-recommended approach.


Also, if uninstalling the previous driver packages and installing the new ones followed by an aticonfig --initial doesn't actually result in a fresh configuration, it may explain why so many different people have been having such inconsistent results with the new drivers. If that is actually the case, there may be a huge number of completely incorrect settings (manual workarounds and dirty fixes for problems in earlier releases) that are unintentionally in play on a large number of systems.

Thanks!

-Porter

[bridgman]

I'm pretty sure that aticonfig --initial sets things up properly after a fresh install. What I don't know is whether it will fully reset everything after using the driver and adjusting settings manually etc...