[solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

Jack B · 2010-04-19 22:15:52

I did a fairly big upgrade a few day back, after travelling around away from decent internet. Since the update some of my apps (so far, Firefox, Thunderbird, gnome system monitor but not sunbird) display a completely garbled interface. The window decoration is fine in most, but not all, cases, but everything else is bad:

Firefox still works - the box near the cursor is the search box on the google homepage. If I tab through to it I can search and the window title changes accordingly.

So far I've tried:

1) deleting my xorg.conf

2) rolling back (which fixes the problem)

I tried re-adding packages a few at a time, but that didn't work - the problems didn't come back till the next reboot or possibly the next restart of X. And I broke pacman in the process, so I'm reluctant to try again.

As I suspect this is hardware dependent, I'm running a IBM TP41 which has a ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, and I'm using the open source video drivers, not flgrx.

I'm more or less out of ideas, so your help is appreciated.

Edit: It's getting late in my timezone. I'll check back tomorrow.
Edit2: added solved to title

Last edited by Jack B (2010-04-21 19:52:05)

Ashex · 2010-04-20 05:41:36

I'm experiencing an identical problem with Firefox and notification bubbles (such as for wifi). I have an IBM T42 with ATI Mobility Radeon 7500. I'm having to use Midori/Opera instead.

When you did a rollback, did you rollback all packages updated?

Edit: Did some more digging, this might be caused by a bug in xf86-video-ati so try downgrading that. See here for details. I don't have old packages due to space limitations so try downgrading that package and let us know what happens.

Last edited by Ashex (2010-04-20 06:21:15)

Jack B · 2010-04-20 09:52:16

I can confirm xf86-video-ati (or possibly ati-dri) is the problem. Going to the vesa driver sorts it out.

I'm at work at the moment, but when I get home I will work out exactly which packages work and which don't, and I'll see if I can post up a copy of the newest working package I have.

tomk · 2010-04-20 11:49:43

ATI KMS is enabled by default in kernel 2.6.33 - try disabling it.

Jack B · 2010-04-20 21:57:52

I already have radeon.modeset=0 on the end of my kernel line, I think I disabled KMS a month or two ago when it was (very briefly) enabled by default. IIRC my system was very broken with KMS enabled back then, I haven't tried turning it back on.

I've found xf86-video-ati-6.12.4-3 to work, and xf86-video-ati-6.12.192-1 not to work, irrespective of ati-dri version. I've just noticed 6.13 seems to be out, so I may try building that with ABS, and see if it fixes it.
EDIT: or maybe I won't, as that needs xorg 1.8 and I don't have enough time to build that and all it's deps just now

For now I've just set pacman to ignore the package, which works as a temporary solution. Are there any diagnostics I can do to help pin down the problem?

Last edited by Jack B (2010-04-20 22:05:07)

tomk · 2010-04-21 05:48:17

You don't need to build xorg18 - you can get it here.

Jack B · 2010-04-21 19:51:16

SOLUTION
I've upgraded to the packages in the xorg18 repo, including xf86-video-ati-6.13, and the problem is solved.

Thanks all

PS: KMS now seems to work too.

Last edited by Jack B (2010-04-21 20:07:24)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-19 22:15:52

[solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

#2 2010-04-20 05:41:36

Re: [solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

#3 2010-04-20 09:52:16

Re: [solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

#4 2010-04-20 11:49:43

Re: [solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

#5 2010-04-20 21:57:52

Re: [solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

#6 2010-04-21 05:48:17

Re: [solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

#7 2010-04-21 19:51:16

Re: [solved] Graphics broken in some apps after upgrade

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