Arch Linux

chakag

Member

From: Hong Kong, China

Registered: 2017-01-21

Posts: 6

White Screen of Death (WSoD) presumably due to graphics driver

I'm experiencing The White Screen of Death (WSoD) after the last upgrade
(from last night in my timezone).
My screen freezes and slowly turns white, then the whole system
automatically reboots and the screen turns white again even
the GUI login part doesn't show up.

I suspected xorg-xinit causing the problem and reported the bug
at <https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/68247>. There are some logs in that
bug report.

However, after downgrading xorg-xinit, the bug still exists.

Is there any ways to diagnostic the problem?

I am downgrading these packages:

warning: alsa-card-profiles: ignoring package upgrade (13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-3 => 13.99.2+11+g05f567086-1)
warning: freetype2: ignoring package upgrade (2.10.2-1 => 2.10.3-1)
warning: libpulse: ignoring package upgrade (13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-3 => 13.99.2+11+g05f567086-1)
warning: pulseaudio: ignoring package upgrade (13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-3 => 13.99.2+11+g05f567086-1)
warning: xorg-xinit: ignoring package upgrade (1.4.1-2 => 1.4.1-3)

The last package I downgrade is freetype2. The system has been stable until now,
I will update the info if the system freezes again.

Updated: The screen stills freezes and turns white. Now I'm downgrading package xcb-proto (1.14.1-1 => 1.13-4).

Last edited by chakag (2020-10-15 08:30:19)

chakag

Member

From: Hong Kong, China

Registered: 2017-01-21

Posts: 6

Re: White Screen of Death (WSoD) presumably due to graphics driver

The screen still turns white after downgrading xcb-proto. I'm downgrading libinput for now.

Actually, I'm thinking  I have a problem with incompatible graphic drivers.
I'm using Intel i7-4800MQ and Radeon HD 8790M.
Also, I'm using linux-lts.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,672

Re: White Screen of Death (WSoD) presumably due to graphics driver

Read your kernel logs, the dmesg and journal can you boot to a non graphical TTY? Can you switch TTYs? If you are going to downgrade something downgrade the kernel, it's the single most impactful piece of software on an issue like this.

FWIW there are a lot of reports for issues with radeon in recent kernels, but your card is new enough that you could attempt to switch to the amdgpu kernel driver (... though it'd probably be better if these kinds of things are reported to the kernel devs instead/additionally)

Last edited by V1del (2020-10-15 09:10:04)

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,911

Re: White Screen of Death (WSoD) presumably due to graphics driver

The symptoms you describe sound like a hardware problem, but let's not jump to conclusions.

for clarity : the problems started after these updates ?

[2020-10-13T21:19:15+0700] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman --color=auto -Syu'
[2020-10-13T21:19:15+0700] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2020-10-13T21:19:22+0700] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] transaction started
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] upgraded alsa-card-profiles (13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-3 -> 13.99.2+11+g05f567086-1)
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] upgraded freetype2 (2.10.2-1 -> 2.10.3-1)
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] upgraded libpulse (13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-3 -> 13.99.2+11+g05f567086-1)
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] upgraded libsecret (0.20.3-1 -> 0.20.4-1)
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] upgraded pulseaudio (13.99.2+7+g6101798c7-3 -> 13.99.2+11+g05f567086-1)
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] upgraded xorg-xinit (1.4.1-2 -> 1.4.1-3)
[2020-10-13T21:21:14+0700] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2020-10-13T21:21:15+0700] [ALPM] running '30-systemd-udev-reload.hook'...
[2020-10-13T21:21:15+0700] [ALPM] running '30-systemd-update.hook'...
[2020-10-13T21:21:15+0700] [ALPM] running 'glib-compile-schemas.hook'...

xorg log shows nothing weird, the journalctl output in the bugreport is unreadable due to unnecessary explanations, guess it was made with -xe .

boot with systemd.unit=multi-user.target appended to your kernel parameters (how to do that depends on your bootloader)

login to console as root
Get full lspci -k and journalctl -b outputs, use  a pastebin client to upload them.

If this fails due to wsod , boot with arch installation iso and check if that also gives wsod .

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

chakag

Member

From: Hong Kong, China

Registered: 2017-01-21

Posts: 6

Re: White Screen of Death (WSoD) presumably due to graphics driver

Thank you, @V1del and @Lone_Wolf. Now I'm more confident that my case is a hardware issue.
Recently, everytime the screen faded out to white, I press the lower border outside the screen
and the screen turns back to normal.

I don't know how much does it cost but I should look forward for hardware fixup.

Edit: I haven't told this: since a few weeks, the lower border of the screen has been really hot,
unlike the rest of the screen and other part of the screen border.

Last edited by chakag (2020-10-17 14:35:32)