Arch Linux

finnblue8

Member

Registered: 2022-01-30

Posts: 20

[SOLVED] Graphics not displaying correctly after updates this week

Hi all:

Posting this in Kernel & Hardware because I'm not exactly sure what the problem is and/or where it should go.

Since updating my Arch system around Sunday/Monday -- not exactly sure what I did that started this issue -- Arch has been completely unusable because opening programs takes like 20+ seconds each time, and I get these really weird graphics bugs where the window for the program will be drawn, but the whole area of the window will still be my desktop background, which expands and contracts when I minimize and maximize things. Eventually things will load if you give them enough time, but doing pretty much any action causes the whole DE (KDE Plasma) to lock up for like ten seconds. I mean anything -- clicking on a bookmark in Firefox, trying to exit out of programs, sometimes opening new programs will freeze the system instead of opening the window and then freezing.

I have used Arch on this computer since January without incident, and it was rock solid stable until I logged on Monday night. My laptop also runs Arch on Cinnamon and is up-to-date and has had no problems.

I've troubleshooted for two or three hours total over the last two days, and I'm out of ideas at this point. I'm pretty confident this is either a bug in the new NVIDIA driver that was released, 510.60.02, a bug in the 5.17.1 kernel (which I was running without incident for days before this started happening), or maybe a bug stemming from how the new NVIDIA driver interacts with the 5.17.1 kernel. Booting into the system using Nouveau makes this issue go away -- however I can't use Nouveau because of other issues with it I've never been able to solve.

No evidence of a hardware issue that I can see. I've been using my computer running Windows 10 instead (dual boot system) since this started happening so I can actually be productive in any way, and Windows 10 has no issues whatsoever. A SMART test of my connected drives yields no errors. Nothing major has changed in this Arch setup in the last week aside from the 5.17.1 kernel and the 510.60.02 NVIDIA driver.

Here's a link to a recording of the issue I made on my phone:

https://imgur.com/k99qxgS

Starting anything from the terminal yields the same behavior as starting things from the taskbar -- window is drawn but doesn't load and then loads normally after 10-15 seconds.

I ran Top before posting, and it's not reporting any abnormal strain on resources whatsoever. CPU usage is at like 4% with one Firefox tab open and I have ~14GB of RAM free at all times. 80GB of free disk space on the SSD housing both Arch's files and my home directory (separate partitions on the same disk). FSCK doesn't report any errors at all with any of my filesystems.

This install has worked without incident for three months. I only started seeing this behavior around Monday this week having a fully up-to-date system -- I upgrade my packages every morning. The only thing major that I think could have changed was the NVIDIA driver upgrade, but I've already tried downgrading drivers to the version before 510.60.02, and that did nothing.

Not a single error in the syslog.

I feel like something in the graphics pipeline -- X11, NVIDIA driver, Plasma DE, maybe even the new kernel -- isn't updating in real-time properly, which creates that effect where the program opens but has messed-up graphics for a dozen seconds. "libx11" was upgraded to a new version on Sunday alongside the NVIDIA driver; I thought that might be the culprit instead, but I've tried downgrading "libx11" to no benefit.

Really not sure what could be causing this. I'm typing these messages from Windows now because Arch is unusable, and Windows 10 is clean as a whistle. There's been no hardware changes or anything to this system from when Arch was first installed in January. The only things that have changed are the software packages installed, and the only software packages that changed in the last week are whatever was updated in the Arch repositories. I haven't installed any new programs or done anything to touch the graphics settings in any way. I don't have any AUR packages that might affect graphics.

Some additional examples:

https://imgur.com/suAxZ6Y

That's not two Firefox windows. That's one Firefox window and a new GNOME Terminal window that was just opened.

https://imgur.com/OvXGnhO

That's not two Firefox windows. That's a single Firefox window that was maximized. The old-size window is still visible on the right.

System info:

5.17.1 kernel. I've tried running the LTS kernel and NVIDIA driver, and that has the same issue.

i7-6700 CPU

GTX 1070 GPU running 510.60.02 driver. Already tried downgrading driver and utilities back to 510.54 and the issue persists.

16GB RAM

Arch installed on SSD. Arch OS and home directory are separate partitions on this same SSD. No errors reported on either filesystem by FSCK. Totally clean.

KDE Plasma using KWin compositor. I've tried disabling KWin and running Picom instead, and Picom has the same issue.

This system is 100% up-to-date through today 4/6.

Thank you so much for any help!

Last edited by finnblue8 (2022-04-07 21:48:04)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 51,826

Re: [SOLVED] Graphics not displaying correctly after updates this week

That looks and sounds like the issue is limited to firefox? Or maybe just GL clients?

Post the output of "glxinfo" and a complete system journal (sudo journalctl -b) - you can use the tip in the first link below to not having to use a browser, but it must be from the malfunctioning session.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

finnblue8

Member

Registered: 2022-01-30

Posts: 20

Re: [SOLVED] Graphics not displaying correctly after updates this week

Thanks very much for your reply. I seem to have solved this for now. Apparently the issue is caused by a bad AppArmor profile for PulseAudio. I don't recall where I got this profile, but I got it probably a month and a half ago setting up AppArmor on my installation. It's worked flawlessly up until something was updated in the past week, probably over the weekend I think. Why a bad profile for PulseAudio would affect graphics doesn't make any sense to me, but when I turn the profile to complain mode and reboot everything works as normal -- no wonky windows anywhere. This is also why attempting to play songs in Rhythmbox since this issue started was completely freezing the system if I didn't mention that.

After deleting that profile the 510.60.02 driver works fine. Seems the problem was never anything graphics related at all. 5.17.1 kernel too.

AppArmor was about the only thing I hadn't checked at the time of posting this, and it didn't seem a likely cause because nothing graphics-related is sandboxed by AppArmor on my system.

Thanks very much for your help!