FireFox garbled after update last night.

Gary13579 · 2010-04-10 07:05:57

Saw .33 was pushed out of testing, ran the upgrade, this morning I tried to open firefox (firefox-pgo-beta from the AUR). It was completely garbled, so I rebuilt it. Still garbled. So I removed it and installed the binary firefox release from Extra. Still garbled.

Obvious things like starting in safe mode, deleting ~/.mozilla, etc. have all failed. I'm open to suggestions, but the first person to suggest I switch to Chrome gets a kitten thrown at them.

Edit: Oh, and as you can probably see, underneath it all FireFox *is* running. If I try hard enough to make out where stuff is, I can still browse the web, but it's otherwise unusable. Other GTK applications seem to be working fine.

Last edited by Gary13579 (2010-04-10 07:07:21)

dcc24 · 2010-04-10 07:28:24

Seems like your problem is related to this: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=94945

See if the solution I posted there works for you.

Gary13579 · 2010-04-10 07:31:55

That did not work but I will watch that thread as well.

Also worth mentioning that firefox outputs nothing when started via terminal.

Gary13579 · 2010-04-10 09:23:05

Fixed it (thanks to the wonderful wonder on IRC!) I could have sworn there was no driver changes, but looking through pacman log, it updated me to xf86-video-ati 6.12.192-1. The problem appears to arise for ATI Radeon Mobility M6 LY video cards.

The fix, from launchpad is to apply

Section "Device"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
EndSection

to your xorg.conf.

I am using the Xorg posted on the wiki for the ThinkPad X31 (I could have sworn I was using this before, but apparently not...), http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IBM … _rendering

userlander · 2010-04-11 00:38:27

Just want to report that this fix doesn't work for the R40 thinkpad, at least. Firefox starts okay again, but enabling EXA severely slows down the browser. Scrolling in webpages is reduced to a crawl, and it seems to carry over to chromium, while strangely Epiphany is okay. Reverting back to XAA speeds up chromium again, but then ffox gets the garbling effect.

>> Edit: downgrading to xf86-video-ati-6.12.4-3 is the only solution I can find so far.

Last edited by userlander (2010-04-11 01:09:24)

Gary13579 · 2010-04-11 01:37:20

Thanks for the comment userlander, I just noticed the incredibly slow scrolling as well. I wasn't sure if it was due to my PGO build or what. Chromium scrolling seems okay here, but scrolling even a decent sized page in FireFox jumps up to 100% CPU and crawls.

Downgrading the driver fixed it, but I hate not running the latest software. Where should we be reporting this?

the_eye · 2010-04-17 16:56:29

*raises hand* also having this problem on a thinkpad x31
thoughts:
a) I thought we were supposed not to use an xorg.conf any more, that method being deprecated in favour of "autodetection of everything"?
b) this sucks, hardware that works, the driver used to work and an update breaks it? well thanks lots.
c) I _guess_ the correct course of action is filing a bug against the driver? will try to do that.

the_eye · 2010-04-17 17:05:47

bug filed at http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/19138

the_eye · 2010-04-17 19:09:57

and bug closed by somebody saying "works for me". wtf?

a1ex · 2010-04-18 09:21:15

I cant tell exactly which option made the speed improvements, but I get a useable firefox this way, compared to just "AccelMethod" "EXA", which is painfully slow. (XAA kills firefox as well here)

Section "Device"
        Option     "SWcursor" "False" 
        Option     "AGPMode" "4" 
        Option     "AGPFastWrite" "True" 
        Option     "EnablePageFlip" "True" 
        Option     "AccelDFS"  "True" 
        Option     "ClockGating" "True" 
        Option     "AccelMethod" "EXA"  
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "radeon"
    VendorName  "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName   "Radeon Mobility M6 LY"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

Last edited by a1ex (2010-04-18 09:24:14)

the_eye · 2010-04-18 13:22:02

well
a) yep, confirmed, that's better. though what I did was compare your example above to the one from the wiki and add the lines that are there in yours but aren't in the wiki ..
namely the one about AccelDFS and the one about ClockGating. whatever that means, it leads to some quite dramatic improvements, performance-wise, even when using EXA. Nevertheless, still feels slightly less snappy than with XAA but is now useable AND firefox works.

b) given that I was told off in my bug-report for using an xorg.conf ("no support for user config") this is really something that shouldn't be necessary ..

AndyRTR · 2010-04-18 16:40:44

Two options:

a) run the recommended way: KMS. check if console resolition is set properly via drmmodule (dmesg output). Then check if X is accelerated in Xorg.0.log. If both work as expected check Firefox.

b) if there's an upstream issue not yet solved in the current stable kernel you may want to fall back to USM. then still check dmesg and Xorg.0.log. Check FF again.

Both usually don't need any xorg.conf. Check different desktops. Kde is known to have issues right now.

So far I haven't seen any helpful input here to investige further. I cannot see a bug in our way we package it. Configuration trouble can be discussed here or in irc. Use the bugtracker when you have made sure its indeed a bug.

a1ex · 2010-04-18 17:10:31

the_eye wrote:

a) yep, confirmed, thjat's better. though what I did was compare your example above to the one from the wiki and add the lines that are there in yours but aren't in the wiki ..
namely the one about AccelDFS and the one about ClockGating. whatever that means, it leads to some quite dramatic improvements, performance-wise, even when using EXA. Nevertheless, still feels slightly less snappy than with XAA but is now useable AND firefox works.

Probably AccelDFS then. ClockGating is for power saving (I doubt its even working though, I underclocked the card anyway). Manpage says its some KMS related speed improvement stuff.

I dont have the time to test XAA right now, but I didnt experience any errors despite firefox. Video, other windows and Wesnoth menu screen worked snappy as expected.

Gary13579 · 2010-04-24 02:12:44

I'll do some more testing in a day or two when I have the time, been incredibly busy and just running the old driver because it makes life easier and I need a usable notebook while busy .

On an unrelated note, what have you underclocked your card to a1ex? When I use the 100/90 as suggested on the X31 wiki page, I get screen corruption. Especially after coming out of hibernate.

the_eye · 2010-04-26 21:46:37

will describe my own testing results maybe tomorrow (includes core-dump and system freeze upon trying to use kms) but just wanted to share a quick interesting workaround:

ssh -X localhost firefox

_that_ works
also slow, though.

the_eye · 2010-04-27 19:33:16

OK, a big w00t from me!
after enabling the repository described here: http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/ … 16387.html
I installed the hottest newest latest xorg, including newer radeon driver, and now
a) kms doesn't lead to a panic/freeze upon loading the radeon module any more
b) X without xorg.conf works again and gives me a good-looking firefox which doesn't suck speed-wise.

Now these updates just have to filter through to everyone and this goes away ..

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-10 07:05:57

FireFox garbled after update last night.

#2 2010-04-10 07:28:24

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#3 2010-04-10 07:31:55

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#4 2010-04-10 09:23:05

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#5 2010-04-11 00:38:27

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#6 2010-04-11 01:37:20

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#7 2010-04-17 16:56:29

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#8 2010-04-17 17:05:47

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#9 2010-04-17 19:09:57

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#10 2010-04-18 09:21:15

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#11 2010-04-18 13:22:02

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#12 2010-04-18 16:40:44

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#13 2010-04-18 17:10:31

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#14 2010-04-24 02:12:44

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#15 2010-04-26 21:46:37

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

#16 2010-04-27 19:33:16

Re: FireFox garbled after update last night.

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