Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

Everdras · 2021-01-19 04:05:16

I'm still putting this puzzle together but I wanted to post about what I've been noticing for the past 2ish weeks. Also not sure if this is a kernel and hardware thing or a laptop thing.

I have a dell xps 13 (9310), 1920x1200 model.

Basically, every once in a while (every 5-15 mins?), my system will "hitch" for about 50-100ms. It's fairly subtle but right in the area where it's almost *more* jarring just because it's so short. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me for the first few days it started happening. I notice it most while scrolling text in chromium, but I notice it in both vscode and IntelliJ Idea. (I'm fairly sure it happens in other programs but uh those are the only three programs I've used in the past 2 weeks...) The page I've noticed it most on is https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035 because it's black text on a plain white background but also because I've been scrolling it rather aggressively and I notice the hitch every time it happens if it does so while I'm scrolling. Anyway, I've been using it as a test page, because I can usually reproduce the issue within a few minutes on it.

It definitely started on Jan 9th when I did my first -Syu in a week or two. A few notable packages upgraded, such as mesa and vulkan, but at this point I think they're red herrings because they were minor version bumps. I'll admit I didn't try downgrading these yet, because looking at my pkg cache,

$ ls -lrt ./linux-5*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77390325 Oct 17 09:48 ./linux-5.9.1.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77413586 Oct 29 13:20 ./linux-5.9.2.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77427718 Nov  1 08:55 ./linux-5.9.3.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77427251 Nov  5 15:50 ./linux-5.9.6.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77429545 Nov 10 17:54 ./linux-5.9.8.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77437180 Nov 22 09:28 ./linux-5.9.10.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77436182 Nov 27 21:08 ./linux-5.9.11.arch2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77437733 Dec  2 11:25 ./linux-5.9.12.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77431030 Dec  8 07:14 ./linux-5.9.13.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 81174970 Dec 12 16:05 ./linux-5.9.14.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77185892 Jan  9 13:19 ./linux-5.10.6.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77179928 Jan 13 09:00 ./linux-5.10.7.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 77191301 Jan 17 17:15 ./linux-5.10.8.arch1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

I noticed I'd been on linux 5.9 since I got this laptop in October, so I downgraded to 5.9.14 and haven't noticed it hitch since (it's now been about an hour).

I'm not necessarily proclaiming victory quite yet - I'll update tomorrow if I notice it or not. But I'm curious whether anyone else has noticed anything like this?

Everdras · 2021-01-19 04:16:41

Oh, some extra info - all the usual investigations looks clean. dmesg, journalctl, etc. Nothing interesting prints after the wifi connects, just pam audit log prints from me using sudo.

V1del · 2021-01-19 07:09:20

Remove xf86-video-intel and files referencing the xorg intel driver if installed. It's in a maybe-maintained-but-not-really limbo and often has compat broken on newer kernel releases.

Everdras · 2021-01-19 13:31:03

Ah interesting. What driver would I then be using? I also have vulkan-intel installed, I assume it's either that or something built into the kernel? I'm running a very vanilla gnome3/gdm install.

Everdras · 2021-01-19 13:36:47

Removing xf86-video-intel does not seem to help (though doesn't seem to have hurt), I just reproduced the issue within a minute or two of removing xf86-video-intel, running -Syu, and rebooting. There are no files in /etc/X11/ referencing the intel driver (and notably xorg.conf.d is empty).

(I've now downgraded back to linux 5.9.x again)

Last edited by Everdras (2021-01-19 13:39:03)

seth · 2021-01-19 14:57:17

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In … flickering
There's only an intel chip, this isn't an optimus system?

Everdras · 2021-01-19 22:25:11

Correct. And I wouldn't call it flickering, and it doesn't seem like it's nearly as frequent as the flickers reported in the reports linked to in the wiki section.

seth · 2021-01-19 22:51:55

You should still try to disable psr, there're recent posts abot it causing trouble *again* (so the pattern may very well differ)

Arch Linux

#1 2021-01-19 04:05:16

Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#2 2021-01-19 04:16:41

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#3 2021-01-19 07:09:20

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#4 2021-01-19 13:31:03

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#5 2021-01-19 13:36:47

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#6 2021-01-19 14:57:17

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#7 2021-01-19 22:25:11

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

#8 2021-01-19 22:51:55

Re: Graphical "Hitching" on kernel 5.10.x but not on 5.9.x

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