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ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

[solved] laggy X Core Font rendering after today's updates

I've got an interesting issue after applying today's updates of kernel, X server, and nouveau, and I'd like some of you to try reproducing it, in the hope that it will help me figure out which component is causing it. Rendering of X Core Fonts, AKA XLFD (non-Freetype fonts) is laggy. When some text in such a font should be drawn, space is made to display it, but the text doesn't appear until I push a key or wiggle the mouse.

Please try this experiment: Open a terminal (urxvt or plain xterm will do) using an old-school "fixed" font. I used 7x14 for my testing. Run "sleep 1" in this terminal and don't touch anything after hitting enter. If you find that most of the time, the prompt doesn't come back when sleep exits until you use the keyboard or mouse, you've duplicated the issue. It's also fairly easy to notice just by typing normally in such a terminal as the input echoes back rather slowly. It feels as it server-side font rendering is hung up by the server waiting on an event that really shouldn't be involved with fonts.

I'm running nouveau on a GT9400, and applied these updates tonight:

[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded kernel26 (2.6.36.3-2 -> 2.6.37-5)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded libdrm (2.4.22-3 -> 2.4.23-1)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded libgl (7.9.0.git20101207-2 -> 7.10-1)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded libva (1.0.6-1 -> 1.0.8-1)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded mesa (7.9.0.git20101207-2 -> 7.10-1)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded xf86-video-nouveau (0.0.16_git20100819-2 -> 0.0.16_git20101217-1)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded xorg-server-common (1.9.2-2 -> 1.9.3.901-1)
[2011-01-30 18:59] upgraded xorg-server (1.9.2-2 -> 1.9.3.901-1)

I'd be especially interested if it's broken for anyone not running nouveau, or who didn't update all of these components. Once I narrow it down a bit, I'll open a bug (either here, or upstream somewhere). It's easy to work around, by just using a TrueType font in my terminals instead, but still worth a bit of investigation.

Last edited by ataraxia (2011-02-07 04:55:32)

jhl

Member

Registered: 2011-02-07

Posts: 1

Re: [solved] laggy X Core Font rendering after today's updates

I had this trouble when I upgraded to
xf86-video-nouveau-git (20110206-1)
and had to upgrade to
libdrm (2.4.23-1)

Fixed by rolling back to
xf86-video-nouveau (0.0.16_git20100819-1)
libdrm (2.4.21-1)

I'm running the very latest Nouveau git kernel modules, but going back several versions made no difference.

[edit: bug filed upstream]

Last edited by jhl (2011-02-07 03:32:49)

ataraxia

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2007-05-06

Posts: 1,553

Re: [solved] laggy X Core Font rendering after today's updates

Ah, I see the upstream bug leads me to understanding this issue. Nouveau users now have to choose between well-behaved complex "new" apps such as Firefox and OpenOffice Impress (Option "WrappedFB" "false", the new default), and well-behaved old apps, basically anything using server-side fonts (Option "WrappedFB" "true"). Annoying, but understandable. I'll stick with "false", as I'm ok with client-side fonts in my terminals, and I've actually seen the bad Firefox behavior - try Google Image Search if you haven't.