Sway: Flickering and crash

Created on 4 Sep 2017 · 17Comments · Source: swaywm/sway

Windows flickers like anything (even terminals) while scrolling. This does not show up when swaygrab -c is on, hence a video from my mobile phone https://goo.gl/photos/nBq1Td3wA8AEKyeDA . The system hard-crashes occassionally (no magic keys to the rescue; only hard reset) but not sure if this is related to the flicker. Tried to redirect sway -d to a log file but loses it during the crash. Ready to provide any log...

Source

acorreya

👍1

Most helpful comment

This has been confirmed to not affect wlroots, so we'll probably just sit tight.

ddevault on 28 Sep 2017

🎉2

All 17 comments

GPU?

ddevault on 5 Sep 2017

Will this do?

hwinfo --gfxcard   
10: PCI 02.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)              
  [Created at pci.378]
  Unique ID: _Znp.CCoAMI2qUtC
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x0f31 "Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1025 "Acer Incorporated [ALI]"
  SubDevice: pci 0x0933 
  Revision: 0x0e
  Driver: "i915"
  Driver Modules: "i915"
  Memory Range: 0x90000000-0x903fffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0x80000000-0x8fffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0x2050-0x2057 (rw)
  Memory Range: 0x000c0000-0x000dffff (rw,non-prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 256 (3261 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00000F31sv00001025sd00000933bc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: i915 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe i915"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

Primary display adapter: #10

acorreya on 5 Sep 2017

I can reproduce this with

19: PCI 02.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)              
  [Created at pci.378]
  Unique ID: _Znp.j5duo6BuBmF
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:00:02.0
  Hardware Class: graphics card
  Model: "Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x8086 "Intel Corporation"
  Device: pci 0x2a42 "Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller"
  SubVendor: pci 0x17aa "Lenovo"
  SubDevice: pci 0x20e4 
  Revision: 0x07
  Driver: "i915"
  Driver Modules: "i915"
  Memory Range: 0xf2000000-0xf23fffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xdfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  I/O Ports: 0x1800-0x1807 (rw)
  Memory Range: 0x000c0000-0x000dffff (rw,non-prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 16 (72887 events)
  I/O Port: 0x00 (rw)
  Module Alias: "pci:v00008086d00002A42sv000017AAsd000020E4bc03sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: i915 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe i915"
  Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown

I'm tempted to pin this issue on either wlc or the graphics driver.

ddevault on 5 Sep 2017

Is there anything I should do about it? Like raising an issue somewhere?

acorreya on 5 Sep 2017

You've already made an issue. If you'd like to help please debug more and send a patch.

4e554c4c on 5 Sep 2017

Please guide me, I'm all ears.

acorreya on 8 Sep 2017

See if you can reproduce it on older kernels. If you can, start doing a bisect. Try older wlc builds if that doesn't work. Maybe things like libdrm as well. Narrow down the problem.

ddevault on 9 Sep 2017

👍1

Mine too flickers, not usually but occasionally during chromium is running in full screen. I don't know but I guess this is not a graphics driver issue.

PeaceAlways on 12 Sep 2017

Update:
Looks like it flickers very rarely when using kernel aur/linux-rt-bfq 4.9.47.37-1 (7, 0.52).

4.12.13-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Sep 15 06:36:43 UTC 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux .

acorreya on 20 Sep 2017

Can see the same on way-cooler 1:0.6.2-2, less flicker on linux-rt-bfq kernel

acorreya on 26 Sep 2017

I've been seeing similar issues on Way Cooler, but only on one of my machines. It's definitely not wlc related, as I have another machine that doesn't experience the issue. It's almost certainly some dependency issue, coupled potentially with a bad driver or something. Using standard Linux kernel myself, so libdrm might be a good thing to try next.

Timidger on 26 Sep 2017

How about on other non-wlc Wayland compositors?

ddevault on 26 Sep 2017

@SirCmpwn Haven't tested, I'll try running Weston tonight and see if I can reproduce it.

Timidger on 26 Sep 2017

After some testing on weston, I can't reproduce it (it only appears sometimes though, so maybe it just hasn't happened yet).

I'll test on wlroots later, maybe if we are lucky this is just a weird wlc edge case that didn't make it to wlroots.

Timidger on 27 Sep 2017

This has been confirmed to not affect wlroots, so we'll probably just sit tight.

ddevault on 28 Sep 2017

🎉2

Has any progress been made?

I get similar crashes too, I'm on the latest kernel. It only seems to happen when I have chromium open, and it happens only once or twice per day, it seems to have something to do with uptime.

Also, when I do get a crash, the only thing that works is a hard reset. Everything is completely frozen, or at least the video is frozen and everything else is still working.