Arch Linux

cabellicar123

Member

Registered: 2015-08-03

Posts: 56

Flickering Screen Intel

I am getting a flickering screen which are just quick flashes of black seemingly random and often come in spurts. I am using the xf86-video-intel driver and have tried switching to UXA but this does not solve the issue and instead makes my Firefox appear to lag.

$ lspci | grep -e VGA -e 3D
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Integrated Graphics (rev 07)

I also see this issue in dmesg:

[drm:intel_cpu_fifo_underrun_irq_handler [i915]] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun

Additionally I have only noticed this in the last few days so could it be related to the recent kernel update?

$ uname -a
Linux arch 4.5.0-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Mar 15 09:41:03 CET 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Is this a bug in the driver and if so has it been reported?

Last edited by cabellicar123 (2016-04-15 14:37:47)

nvteighen

Member

Registered: 2014-03-13

Posts: 31

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

As weird as it may sound to you, try removing xf86-video-intel. That will force the Linux kernel to use the so-called modesetting driver some people are recommending to use. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comm … ideointel/ and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics. If you have created /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf, remove it or move it away from there.
(BTW, before testing this, make sure you know how to get the xf86-video-intel driver back from the pacman cache and have your LiveUSB ready, just in case).

cabellicar123

Member

Registered: 2015-08-03

Posts: 56

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

I removed xf86-video-intel and the problem persists along with the dmesg error. I will now reinstall xf86-video-intel. I assume this means that the issue is probably related to the kernel and not the driver.

cabellicar123

Member

Registered: 2015-08-03

Posts: 56

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

Additionally downgrading to 4.4.5-1 seems to have resolved the issue. Where should I report this bug?

nvteighen

Member

Registered: 2014-03-13

Posts: 31

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

Additionally downgrading to 4.4.5-1 seems to have resolved the issue. Where should I report this bug?

This doesn't look to be Arch's fault, so I'd report it upstream, but I guess someone more knowledgeable will know better for sure.

cabellicar123

Member

Registered: 2015-08-03

Posts: 56

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

Here is the bug report:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=116431

bonsairoot

Member

Registered: 2016-04-14

Posts: 10

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

I encountered the same problem when I upgraded to 4.5.

Booting with kernel parameter i915.enable_rc6=0 fixed it for me. The error message is gone as well.

Last edited by bonsairoot (2016-04-15 19:55:50)

cabellicar123

Member

Registered: 2015-08-03

Posts: 56

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

I encountered the same problem when I upgraded to 4.5.

Booting with kernel parameter i915.enable_rc6=0 fixed it for me. The error message is gone as well.

Worked great for me both flickering and error message are gone. Thanks so much!

bonsairoot

Member

Registered: 2016-04-14

Posts: 10

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

This issue seems to be resolved since the upgrade to 4.6.2 for me! Kernel parameter is no longer needed on boot. Since this parameter affects power saving I thought I'd update the post.

knocked

Member

Registered: 2016-08-03

Posts: 4

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

This issue seems to be resolved since the upgrade to 4.6.2 for me! Kernel parameter is no longer needed on boot. Since this parameter affects power saving I thought I'd update the post.

Problem has not been solved. 4.7.1 from AUR (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-mainline/)

Phoenix_the_II

Member

Registered: 2016-08-15

Posts: 2

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

Leaving a note that this fixes things on a dell m3800 here. (i915.enable_rc6=0)

Moxon

Member

Registered: 2017-01-30

Posts: 10

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

This issue seems to be resolved since the upgrade to 4.6.2 for me! Kernel parameter is no longer needed on boot. Since this parameter affects power saving I thought I'd update the post.

Problem has not been solved. 4.7.1 from AUR (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/linux-mainline/)

Apparently it came up again and is present in

Linux 4.12.4-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 28 18:54:18 UTC 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Using the kernel parameter i915.enable_rc6=0 fixes the issue.

Last edited by Moxon (2017-08-09 13:27:13)

aranel

Member

Registered: 2017-05-31

Posts: 2

Re: Flickering Screen Intel

I can also confirm adding i915.enable_rc6=0 to kernel paramaters fixed issue immediately. I'm gonna put this up to wiki as well, thanks for tip.