I just upgraded from OpenSUSE 13.1 to 13.2 using the distribution upgrade mechanism, no issues there. After the upgrade, when I open certain windows like YaST or Okular, my primary monitor (out of 2) will do a momentary flicker before opening the window. This happens for particular windows (these two are just examples), while others (e.g. Mozilla, Chromium, LibreOffice, dolphin) do not cause the flicker. Also, when opening Okular the screen will flicker only when actually loading a PDF file - if I just open Okular's window with no file, the flicker does not happen. Also, opening a file with okular on the second screen will still cause the primary screen to flicker (the secondary does not). I have tried creating a new user to check whether this happens with KDE's default settings and the flicker is still there. Disabling desktop effects made absolutely no difference. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open a YaST window or any PDF file with Okular 2. 3. Actual Results: Window opens after a momentary flicker of the primary screen. Expected Results: Window should open without any flicker Using KDE 4.14.2 on OpenSUSE 13.2 with an ATI 4870 with the Radeon driver.
please attach the output of "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation" > Disabling desktop effects made absolutely no difference. This reads "suspending the compositor"? (press SHIFT+Alt+F12)
Created attachment 89547 [details] output of "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation"
(In reply to Thomas Lübking from comment #1) > please attach the output of "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation" > I attached the output of the file. > > Disabling desktop effects made absolutely no difference. > This reads "suspending the compositor"? (press SHIFT+Alt+F12) That's right, suspending desktop effects either using the keyboard shortcut or using Configure Desktop -> Desktop effects -> Enable desktop effects at startup makes no difference, the problem still occurs. If it makes any difference, I also have a laptop with Intel graphics that uses the latest" tumbleweed" version (again with KDE 4.14.2) with the same KDE theme and window decorations (but with a different pointer theme) and everything works fine. Also, my secondary monitor is rotated by 90 degrees (again, not sure if it makes any difference).
> That's right, suspending desktop effects either using the keyboard shortcut or using Configure Desktop -> Desktop effects -> Enable desktop effects at startup makes no difference, the problem still occurs. It's not in the compositor then for sure. Since you also have "kwin4_effect_fade" in the composited case, we can be pretty sure that the flicker is not related to "the window briefly showed up on one screen and then move to the other" (also the compositor waits a few miliseconds before displaying the window for this matter) => it's likely a driver issue, but unrelated to KWin or compositing. - Are you using glamor acceleration? ("grep -i glamor /var/log/Xorg.0.log") - The okular thing makes me wonder whether it's OpenGL (in the client) related - what about gwenview or something very simple as "glxgears"? - Anything else special about yast + okular? (Fullscreen, maximized, just "huge")? - What for a non rotated screen?
> => it's likely a driver issue, but unrelated to KWin or compositing. Well, that seems reasonable. If you point me in the right direction, I'd be happy to submit a new bug report to whoever handles driver problems (openSUSE's bugzilla?) > > - Are you using glamor acceleration? ("grep -i glamor /var/log/Xorg.0.log") I don't think so, Xorg.0.log does not mention glamor (grep returns nothing), there is no relevant package installed and I haven't done anything manually (e.g. create a Xorg.conf file). > - The okular thing makes me wonder whether it's OpenGL (in the client) > related - what about gwenview or something very simple as "glxgears"? Well, gwenview and glxgears behave just fine. Both open without problems and no flicker is visible. > - Anything else special about yast + okular? (Fullscreen, maximized, just > "huge")? Nothing I can think of, they are in windowed mode with no special settings (not fullscreen, not maximized, not really large or anything. > - What for a non rotated screen? That may be closer to the target When I open "Display configuration" from "Desktop Settings", I get the flicker. No other window in "Desktop Settings" will do that, only "Display configuration". Also, the second monitor's rotation is not reported correctly. It is shown in "Normal" orientation, not rotated as it should be. Setting it to rotated does nothing in particular except show the miniature screen in rotated mode (i.e. nothing changes), but if I close and reopen the "Display configuration", it is again shown in "normal" orientation. I have also tried the following: * The "Unify inputs" option * Disabling the monitor (using the tick box option) * Other screen orientations In all cases, the flicker was still there when opening YaST. Just to clarify, the flicker appears when the actual YaST window appears, not when the first window asking for the root password appears. I am going to try rebooting with the second monitor disconnected after posting this, see if there is any difference. Could it be that Okular or YaST do some sort of screen polling to determine screen settings and that's when the flicker takes place? It would be consistent with the flicker appearing in the case of "Display Configuration".
Disabling the second monitor altogether (i.e. unplugging it while the computer is powered down) made no difference at all, the flicker is still there.
We are getting there. Every time I open one of the flicker-causing windows, Xorg.0.log gets updated with the following lines: [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): EDID vendor "GSM", prod id 19157 [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Using hsync ranges from config file [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Using vrefresh ranges from config file [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines: [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x0.0 108.00 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (64.0 kHz eP) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync (37.9 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0 31.50 640 656 720 840 480 481 484 500 -hsync -vsync (37.5 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x0.0 25.18 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync (31.5 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "720x400"x0.0 28.32 720 738 846 900 400 412 414 449 -hsync +vsync (31.5 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0 78.75 1024 1040 1136 1312 768 769 772 800 +hsync +vsync (60.0 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1024x768"x0.0 65.00 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (48.4 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "832x624"x0.0 57.28 832 864 928 1152 624 625 628 667 -hsync -vsync (49.7 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x0.0 49.50 800 816 896 1056 600 601 604 625 +hsync +vsync (46.9 kHz e) [ 589.231] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1152x864"x0.0 108.00 1152 1216 1344 1600 864 865 868 900 +hsync +vsync (67.5 kHz e) This only happens with the offending windows, other windows do not cause the log file to be updated. They seem indeed to be related to the second monitor, as that is the one with the 1280x1024 max resolution (the other one is 1680x1050). Any ideas?
The same lines are added to Xorg.0.log (and the flicker happens) when I run xrandr -q from a terminal window.
"1280x1024"x0.0 Your screen is running at 0Hz ;-) To be sure: what's the output of "xrandr -q"? Also see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/147073 resp. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/134365 Do you have a zombie Tv connector in the ouptut?
Output of xrandr -q: Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2704 x 1280, maximum 8192 x 8192 DVI-0 connected primary 1680x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 474mm x 296mm 1680x1050 59.95*+ 1280x1024 75.02 60.02 1280x960 60.00 1152x864 75.00 1024x768 75.08 70.07 60.00 832x624 74.55 800x600 72.19 75.00 60.32 56.25 640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00 720x400 70.08 DIN disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-1 connected 1024x1280+1680+0 left (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 376mm x 301mm 1280x1024 60.02*+ 1152x864 75.00 1024x768 75.08 75.03 60.00 832x624 74.55 800x600 75.00 60.32 640x480 75.00 60.00 720x400 70.08 It does have a DIN connector, which I think outputs a TV out signal. I will try disabling it using xorg.conf (if possible, I will have to search around and see how to do that) and report any results.
Success! The flicker gone! Thank you very much for all your help! For the benefit of search engine (and, like myself, not terribly experienced users), I modified /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf as follows: # Having multiple "Monitor" sections is known to be problematic. Make # sure you don't have in use another one laying around e.g. in another # xorg.conf.d file or even a generic xorg.conf file. More details can # be found in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32430. # Section "Monitor" Identifier "DIN" Option "Ignore" "True" EndSection Last question: Should I report the problem with xrandr to anyone so that they may have a look at it - update the list with the "quirky" chipsets I read in the other bug reports you pointed out? Thank you again!
Many thanks for the feedback. The linked bugs will likely only cause a workaround (in ubuntu) - if at all (simply ignoring TVs or other outputs would likely cause more bugreports...) The actual bug would either be in libxrandr, the radeon driver (though there're apparently intel reports as well, the bad code could just be duplicated) or kernel module. You'd be best of to file a bug against libxrandr (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/) and have them wire it down to the driver/kernel module in case. xrandr is just an innocent client binary, like systemsettings, yast or okular. (Latter has some feature to display presentations on a specific screen, it probably checks for attached projectors or TVs or similar)