Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

hakkum · 2011-07-12 00:37:47

Hey all,

I've got an interesting one. I'm on my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop with 64-bit Arch installed. The laptop uses a Intel GM965/GL960 Graphics Controller. I am using StumpWM as my window manager and all software is properly up-to-date. My problem is this: when I start up X (using xf86-video-intel as the driver), and proceed to use xterm, the window will "freeze" momentarily. When I say freeze, I don't mean "computer lockup", rather the window won't refresh. For example, If I type in "ls -a" at the prompt and hit return, nothing happens. However if I manually refresh my screen with 'C-t l' or navigate away from xterm and then back to it, the results of said command are shown as normal. This lockup happens regularly while in xterm...every two or three commands.

However, it only happens while I'm in xterm (actually, any terminal emulator...I tried urxvt and aterm with same results). Using Emacs, Conkeror, etc work perfectly fine. I did try initializing vi from within an xterm window and it too froze up ramdonly, requiring a manual 'C-l' to refresh the screen.

I have narrowed the problem down to be either the xf86-video-intel drivers, or KMS being enabled. When I disabled KMS through Grub2 (setting i915.modeset=0 in the kernel options) and tried starting X, there was an error saying no screens available. This being due to me having only xf86-video-intel installed. I went ahead and installed xf86-video-vesa and am currently running X with that driver. Xterm works flawlessly. I am okay with using the vesa driver, as I don't do any heavy graphics processing, however I would like to resolve the intel driver issue if only for a learning experience.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. I don't have any output errors to show you, as none show up anywhere that I've looked. I've even ran StumpWM directly through an SBCL process as described at: http://stumpwm.svkt.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/Freezes but to no avail.

Thanks again

-- hakkum

skottish · 2011-07-12 02:06:28

I have the exact same laptop and both urxvt and xterm function properly. I'm also on 64 bit and using the intel driver. I'm running xmonad. What happens when you use a different WM?

hakkum · 2011-07-12 02:13:05

I was using KDE prior to this and had no issues, but I figured that it being a full blown DE some how masked or fixed the issue. I've used ratpoison, Ion3, and I believe xmonad in the past ( 6-months+ ago) with no issues, however I was conversing on #stumpwm where another StumpWM user also had Arch 64 installed but had no issues...made me think it wasn't StumpWM to blame...hmmm....

skottish · 2011-07-12 02:42:02

I don't know stumpwm at all, so not so much help from me there. My gut instinct though is that there's a problem somewhere in your stumpwm configuration.

hakkum · 2011-07-12 03:34:55

The problem occurred with a vanilla StumpWM install and persisted through my modded .stumpwmrc file. Also, switching to the xf86-video-vesa driver solved the problem completely which makes me think it's either a compatibility issue with Intel and StumpWM, or has nothing to do with StumpWM at all...

IDK, I'm at a complete loss. But my temp fix is good enough for me for now...thanks for the thoughts skottish

skottish · 2011-07-12 03:55:08

I have one last idea before I drop out of this. Does stumpwm use hardware acceleration at all? That may explain the inconsistancies.

jasonwryan · 2011-07-12 04:06:12

Perhaps related: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=122244

hakkum · 2011-07-12 04:20:34

skottish, not as far as I can tell. It's a pretty bare bones WM and checking the Graphics section of 'about:support' in Mozilla says 0/1 GPU Accelerated Windows. I'm told that that's a good indicator of whether acceleration is enabled or not.

hakkum · 2011-07-12 04:38:46

jasonwryan, yes that does sound like the same thing to me. What I noticed was when I tried installing and running Eterm (which is a vte based terminal), there wasn't a problem with the terminal freezing. However, I'd rather use xterm and the vesa driver as opposed to using Eterm. At least now I know it's not just me...

EDIT: My mistake, I tried Terminator sucessfully...not Eterm.

Last edited by hakkum (2011-07-12 05:00:52)

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-12 00:37:47

Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#2 2011-07-12 02:06:28

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#3 2011-07-12 02:13:05

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#4 2011-07-12 02:42:02

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#5 2011-07-12 03:34:55

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#6 2011-07-12 03:55:08

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#7 2011-07-12 04:06:12

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#8 2011-07-12 04:20:34

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

#9 2011-07-12 04:38:46

Re: Intel Video Drivers (xf86-video-intel) Causes Xterm to "Freeze"

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