Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

maciejjo · 2016-02-18 11:34:02

Hi,

I have encountered a strange behavior on my system recently. After I suspend
the machine and resume, some font glyphs are gone:

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

From what I observed it seems only to concern particular fonts: terminus (which
I use in i3bar, gtk theme) and Terminess Powerline (which I use in urxvt) - for
example Arch web pages are not affected at all. After I exit i3 and start it
again, everything comes back to normal. (restarting i3 without exiting
sometimes fixes it, sometimes does not).

Moreover, when I exit i3, I cannot see tty which I used to start X session
(screen is black) , and after starting X session I cannot switch to any other
tty (all are black screens), and after switching to some tty and returning to
i3 (ctrl+alt+f2, ctrl+alt+f1) font break as well, so maybe it is not related to
suspend/resume but to switching from X to tty.

The problem did not occur before, I think I have first encountered it 2 weeks
ago or so.

I run arch on hp ProBook 640 G1, with Intel i915 integrated GPU. All packages
are up-to-date.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

Last edited by maciejjo (2016-02-18 11:35:54)

hillbicks · 2016-02-20 09:46:50

I have the same issue for a couple of days, just to let you know.

Still haven't figured out what causes this issue, will have to investigate further.

maciejjo · 2016-02-20 21:36:15

Simmilar HW?

As a matter of fact, I can no longer reproduce this. After rebooting I see ttys without problem and when I switch back to X all fonts look good.

forGGe · 2016-02-28 12:26:40

I have the same issue on Dell Latitude E7440 and awesome wm. TTYs is not working and fonts are broken everywhere. However, chromium, atom and skype can print all characters in their windows.

I'm also using xscreensaver and xss-lock-git packages in order to lock screen when suspending.

Last edited by forGGe (2016-02-28 12:28:41)

barraponto · 2016-03-02 01:11:44

I'm affected by the same issue on suspend/resume.
Using i3 and infinality.
Arch webpages are unreadable
Konsole web terminal works 100% ok.

Matalonder · 2016-03-02 23:15:46

I'm experiencing this too, Awesome WM on Thinkpad T530, intel/nvidia (bumblebee). Sometimes fonts are garbled, sometimes you can't see any problems from X, but switching to tty gives blank screen (though you can still use it blindly).
This thread may be describing the same problem.

maciejjo · 2016-03-04 21:58:35

Yesterday I managed to reproduce this again, I think if I suspend/resume
several times it will happen eventually. Does anybody have any idea how to
pinpoint it to specific software/hardware? I also use infinality for fonts and
xss-lock for screen locking.

it has nothing to do with i3 as someone is using awesome, possible common
factors are intel video and infinality.

It would be good to find a method to trigger this behavior more easily... I
already thought I do not experience it anymore, until it happened again
yesterday...

maciejjo · 2016-03-08 14:38:01

It just happened again, I dupmed dmesg to a file before rebooting. There is
something that might be of interest here:

[76320.361616] [drm:intel_set_pch_fifo_underrun_reporting [i915]] *ERROR* uncleared pch fifo underrun on pch transcoder A
[76320.361624] [drm:intel_pch_fifo_underrun_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* PCH transcoder A FIFO underrun
[76320.375466] [drm:intel_set_cpu_fifo_underrun_reporting [i915]] *ERROR* uncleared fifo underrun on pipe B
[76320.375475] [drm:intel_cpu_fifo_underrun_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* CPU pipe B FIFO underrun

If someone experience it again, please try to gather logs, above messages may
be related to the issue.

Fuller log available here: http://pastebin.com/raw/A3bb0MxV

Last edited by maciejjo (2016-03-08 14:44:03)

Matalonder · 2016-03-11 11:48:25

I always get these in logs on login:

[    7.675133] [drm:intel_set_pch_fifo_underrun_reporting [i915]] *ERROR* uncleared pch fifo underrun on pch transcoder A
[    7.675179] [drm:intel_pch_fifo_underrun_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* PCH transcoder A FIFO underrun

By 'always' I mean 'long before this problem manifested' too. I believe I read somewhere they are harmless.

It may be worth noting, though, that I never received 'pipe B' messages on login. Will try to see if they show up in dmesg when problem appears again (strangely, it's gone for a couple of days now for me).

Last edited by Matalonder (2016-03-11 11:49:57)

league · 2016-03-24 14:38:02

This issue is driving me mad, I have to reboot several times a day to escape it. Mine is a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, the card seems to be

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)

FYI, same issue is reported in another thread: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=209289 where they have a link to a kernel bug report/workaround but I'm not certain yet it's the same problem.

I also have the problem where quitting the WM to go back to the console produces entirely black screens, on any virtual console. Machine is still up, but I have to Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot. They don't mention that aspect of the problem on the other thread.

Matalonder · 2016-03-24 14:46:57

league wrote:

I have to reboot several times a day to escape it.

Can't say about your WM, but sometimes it's enough to restart Awesome here (it doesn't kill X server, only WM restarts), and it's always enough to kill X server and run startx blindly again. So maybe this will help you to cut down on time needed to get stuff back how it's supposed to be.
Though I see how that would be problematic with graphical login.

league wrote:

I also have the problem where quitting the WM to go back to the console produces entirely black screens, on any virtual console. Machine is still up, but I have to Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot. They don't mention that aspect of the problem on the other thread.

Same here, though for me virtual terminal stays in frozen state (if there was text, it stays like that, not blank). You can enter commands blindly and everything works, so it's definitely graphics-related problem.
Recently I can reproduce this only by first switching to virtual terminal, seeing that it is frozen and switching back to X. Even then it breaks only sometimes. A more sure way to break stuff is to switch to frozen VT, launch another X server there and switch back to original one. It breaks almost always then.
Though it's enough to restart (kill and startx again) original X server only once to make it play nicely with second one (as in switch however often I'd like to without breaking fonts).

This issue is peculiar indeed.

league · 2016-03-24 14:59:56

Matalonder wrote:

Same here, though for me virtual terminal stays in frozen state (if there was text, it stays like that, not blank). You can enter commands blindly and everything works, so it's definitely graphics-related problem.

Ah, correct. I said black screens from memory, but yes VT1 from where I started X appeared with frozen text. I guess I didn't realize it was accepting keyboard input, I only knew that I could still log in remotely.

I'm using xmonad but not a graphical login. I have X auto-start when I log in on VT1 however, so I presume that VT1 is back at its login prompt when I quit the WM. Typing my password when I'm not sure what program is receiving it is unnerving, but yes maybe better than rebooting. Thanks.

Matalonder · 2016-03-24 15:03:06

league wrote:

I have X auto-start when I log in on VT1 however, so I presume that VT1 is back at its login prompt when I quit the WM. Typing my password when I'm not sure what program is receiving it is unnerving, but yes maybe better than rebooting. Thanks.

Same setting used here. It is indeed back at login prompt, so you have to enter username and password blindly. I'm pretty sure they'll go where you expect them to
At least for me they do.

bitofhope · 2016-03-25 12:49:57

Same bug here. ThinkPad T410, Infinality, AwesomeWM. Sometimes after suspend random glyphs disappear and other TTYs become blank. Firefox becomes almost unusable. Tmux sessions retain the missing characters and words even on remote machines, even if detached and reattached. Restarting Awesome sometimes helps, but not always. Switching to TTY and rebooting blind works.

luk_43 · 2016-03-25 14:55:14

The same here.
Right now I can't reproduce it. It happens randomly after suspend.
Here on my Gnome-session:
http://pasteboard.co/2wZCK72z.png

Try to check log files next time when this appears.
Im on Samsung Samsung ATIV 900X3F with Intel HD Graphics 4000

timosa · 2016-03-27 06:55:21

I have this same problem on my laptop too. It seems to happen with Gnome after the second resume always. It's interesting that even if all other apps have fonts messed up xfce terminal looks fine.

nvteighen · 2016-03-28 23:44:41

Yeah, I've also been experiencing this the last couple of weeks. I've just done the trick that is shown here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … Fresume.29, but I still don't know whether it supresses the problem or not.

league · 2016-03-29 11:50:19

nvteighen wrote:

I've just done the trick that is shown here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … Fresume.29, but I still don't know whether it supresses the problem or not.

I tried that and am still experiencing the problem. I added the setting to /etc/environment, rebooted, confirmed it was set in the shell, and waited a day or so of suspend/resume cycles before resuming this morning to find most glyphs missing from my screen.

nvteighen · 2016-03-29 13:26:50

league wrote:

nvteighen wrote:
I've just done the trick that is shown here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … Fresume.29, but I still don't know whether it supresses the problem or not.
I tried that and am still experiencing the problem. I added the setting to /etc/environment, rebooted, confirmed it was set in the shell, and waited a day or so of suspend/resume cycles before resuming this morning to find most glyphs missing from my screen.

That is bad news for me as well, then. I still haven't experienced any problem so far, but I guess that's just because the bug hasn't hit the system yet in any of the suspend/resume cycles I've done today.

Matalonder · 2016-03-31 13:01:54

A new perhaps helpful observation on Awesome WM.

1) Wait until glyphs in top bar get messed up;
2) Reset Awesome WM (mod4 + ctrl + R does that for me, glyphs shall get fixed);
2) Go to another tty (it should be stuck in whatever state you left it before. No need to launch X session or do anything else, just switch and confirm it's frozen);
3) Switch back to first tty - glyphs in top bar will be messed up again;
4) Switch to another tty again and then back to the one with Awesome. Glyphs will be back for a split second!
5) Repeat switching however much you desire and observe glyphs fixing up for some moments (they can sometimes break again instantly or stay for a second or so, but they'll break again by themselves fairly soon).

I would suppose it's the act of switching to broken TTY that messes glyphs up. I mean, when you resume from sleep machine starts at tty, then goes into X with whatever lock system you use (xscreensaver for me). It's basically the same as switching from X working fine to a frozen tty and back.

Another observation: if on step 2 you start another X server on frozen tty, it won't care about switching at all. Glyphs on this second server will stay fine after you switch from it and back.

[Update]
Also hibernating with uswsusp produces interesting behaviour.
Usually it proceeds as follows after you enter the command:
1) Switch to tty;
2) Snap state (can be observed by leds blinking and screen turning off for a moment);
3) Compress and save image state to disk (reporting progress on tty);
4) Power off.

Then, to resume:
5) After bootloader calls kernel, go straight for uswsusp and load image reporting progress on tty;
6) Switch to image (screen blinks);
7) You can continue using machine.

In steps 1 through 4 tty is broken. In steps 5 (after power on with a 'fresh' kernel just to load image) and 6 it is fine. In step 7 everything breaks again. In other words, whatever it is, it is saved in a suspend image.

[Another update] And now after unsuspending switching ttys does NOT break X for me (though ttys themselves are broken, 'reset' still doesn't work). So it's kinda saved and kinda isn't?

Last edited by Matalonder (2016-03-31 13:21:17)

liaowang11 · 2016-04-07 15:55:39

Any progress on this issue? I'm still suffering from this issue from time to time. Tried all the solutions:
1. adding COGL_ATLAS_DEFAULT_BLIT_MODE=framebuffer to /etc/environment
2. adding Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Last edited by liaowang11 (2016-04-07 15:55:54)

nvteighen · 2016-04-08 06:26:06

liaowang11 wrote:

Any progress on this issue? I'm still suffering from this issue from time to time. Tried all the solutions:
1. adding COGL_ATLAS_DEFAULT_BLIT_MODE=framebuffer to /etc/environment
2. adding Option "AccelMethod" "uxa" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Have you tried uninstalling xf86-video-intel, as recommended on this Reddit thread and even by Debian? As for a couple of days the wiki also makes a reference to this method as an aternative. This will make your system use the kernel's native modesetting driver with Glamor acceleration. (If you do this, delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf). I'm testing this, but it is hard to tell if it's 100% reliable. All I know is that I can know hibernate in a reliable way (but this is from another thread, unrelated to this topic).

icetonic · 2016-05-05 08:25:56

I have the same problem in the last few weeks regularily, also have an Intel graphics card. Sometimes it wakes up fine, but often I get the same glitches (most or all characters missing in X).

Did anyone try to switch to a TTY when this happens? I tried multiple times and all I get is a black screen from which I can not return back, so it seems that more than just fonts are broken after wake-up.

pasthelod · 2016-05-18 20:48:11

Hello!

Same problem, (but on Ubuntu Xenial, which means 4.4.0-22 kernel), also on Haswell i915 integrated GPU (this is also a Dell Latitude E7440), and while using Gnome and X.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b)

For some processes restarting them helps (gnome-terminal), for others it makes no difference (pidgin).

I'll try to get wayland and mir working, maybe one of them is not affected.

PhotonX · 2016-06-09 16:17:40

Same problem running Manjaro on a Thinkpad X200T (Intel 4500MHD graphics). Changing to the 4.2 kernel branch seems to have fixed the problem for me, so it has been introduced either with 4.3 or 4.4, the only thing I know so far is that 4.4 is definitely buggy. Will try 4.5 and 4.6 and report back.

edit: Fixed for me in 4.6.

Last edited by PhotonX (2016-06-23 12:36:41)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-02-18 11:34:02

Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#2 2016-02-20 09:46:50

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#3 2016-02-20 21:36:15

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#4 2016-02-28 12:26:40

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#5 2016-03-02 01:11:44

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#6 2016-03-02 23:15:46

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#7 2016-03-04 21:58:35

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#8 2016-03-08 14:38:01

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#9 2016-03-11 11:48:25

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#10 2016-03-24 14:38:02

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#11 2016-03-24 14:46:57

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#12 2016-03-24 14:59:56

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#13 2016-03-24 15:03:06

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#14 2016-03-25 12:49:57

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#15 2016-03-25 14:55:14

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#16 2016-03-27 06:55:21

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#17 2016-03-28 23:44:41

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#18 2016-03-29 11:50:19

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#19 2016-03-29 13:26:50

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#20 2016-03-31 13:01:54

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#21 2016-04-07 15:55:39

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#22 2016-04-08 06:26:06

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#23 2016-05-05 08:25:56

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#24 2016-05-18 20:48:11

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

#25 2016-06-09 16:17:40

Re: Font glyphs disappear after resume from suspend/return from tty to X

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