GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 664858
Screen repaint issues on nvidia native driver
Last modified: 2014-12-04 16:18:20 UTC
I am having screen repaint (invalidation) issues under Gnome3. I am not running in fallback mode, I am running "proper" Gnome shell with mutter. The problem: Some windows, notably gnome-terminal and gvim, do not always repaint themselves. Sometimes I'd type "ls" in terminal and won't see anything until I move the cursor around or force scrolling. Sometimes I'd run vim in gnome-terminal, close it but vim remains painted in terminal as if it was still running. Sometimes, when typing (or moving around) in vim I get the wrong line of text painted in the wrong place. Again, moving the cursor or forcing refresh fixes it. This seems to happen more often when the window is large. Maximized terminal windows are especially prone to it. When I try to take the screenshot of the corrupted windows, it comes out clean because the visual effect of the screenshot application causes the windows to repaint before it's taken. Attaching my xorg.log file (nvidia driver info is there). Not sure which version of Gnome is it. It's 3.?? - how do I look it up? Nautilus reports its version as 3.2.1. Some more info: I have Thinkpad T510 laptop with Nvidia NVS 3100M card. I'm running the latest Ubuntu (11.09). $ uname -a Linux t510 3.0.0-13-generic #22-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 2 13:27:26 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Created attachment 202167 [details] /var/log/Xorg.0.log
I've been googling desperately trying to get the laptop in a workable state. Apparently there are other folks with the same issue: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1866709
Can you try with the latest nvidia driver? You can get it at http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=122606 . If that doesn't help, testing with the nouveau driver can help to point where the problem is too.
The problem went away after upgrading to the latest nvidia driver.
Sorry I marked it as "OBSOLETE" too early. The problem still exists with the latest version 290.10 of native nvidia driver. It just happens less frequently. By the way I always had this issue with Compiz but there was a setting in Compiz (I believe) to fix this. See, I asked this question a while ago (same hardware): https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=110378 But the solution is offline now and I can't find it back.
I think this is the suckiest Gnome 3 bug of all! It makes me want to pull my hair out! Using both Gnome Terminal and Konsole is a miserable experience due to this bug. I've tried these terminals under IceWM in which they worked perfectly. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650863 and https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=665527 could be marked as duplicates of this bug. (I'm not sure which should be the master bug (to which others reference) but the description of this bug is the cleanest of the three, I believe.) Also, please visit https://www.google.com/search?q=gnome+3+terminal+redraw and after realizing that *it is* indeed a valid and pressing issue mark this bug "confirmed". OS: openSUSE 12.1 Video card: GPU GeForce GTS 250M Nvidia driver: 290.10-13.1 Mutter version: 3.2.1-2.1.2
For you, then. (We don't care about UNCONFIRMED vs. NEW, we treat them both the same. We're considering getting rid of one of them)
*** Bug 650863 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 665527 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Does running GNOME Shell like this fix the problem? CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws gnoome-shell --replace
CLUTTER_PAINT did the trick but as a side effect it also screwed rendering in spectacular ways: windows flicker upon various actions like crazy (for example when Google Chrome loads a page or when exposing the dash by going to the upper left corner). Moving to KDE until this gets resolved.
Tried this: CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws gnome-shell --replace It makes the desktop unusable.
Whoops, my bad. I thought disable-clipped-redraws disabled culling automatically. Try: CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling gnome-shell --replace
Although CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling gnome-shell --replace seems to make clutter correctly redraw terminal content, it happens with a significant delay, many times taking as long as about 1-2 seconds when scrolling a page within mcedit. So far it's the best workaround for this bug but it's a far cry from having satisfying usability for terminals.
Right, I just wanted to make sure it was related to clipped redraws. So the proper way to fix this bug would be to implement the NV_fence stuff.
A month or so ago, I tried implementing the fence stuff and it did not fix serious update issues with gnome-terminal, which appeared to the best I could tell to be bugs in the nvidia X server. (Perhaps related to rendering on an ARGB window.) I didn't have a chance to do further testing at that point.
(In reply to comment #16) > A month or so ago, I tried implementing the fence stuff and it did not fix > serious update issues with gnome-terminal, which appeared to the best I could > tell to be bugs in the nvidia X server. (Perhaps related to rendering on an > ARGB window.) I didn't have a chance to do further testing at that point. So, the massive performance issues I was seeing with gnome-terminal and the nvidia proprietary drivers were with the 285.05.09 drivers; with 290.10, I don't see them any more - gnome-terminal performs very well. (Without fencing, but the Quadro FX 3700 I'm testing with here may be insufficiently multi-threaded internally to reveal problems.)
Actually, upgrading to 290.10 was the first thing I did when I started having the issue. It didn't seem to help at all. I mainly use urxvt with rgba transparency. I tried xterm with plain black and white and it didn't seem to help either.
Gnome developers, This bug makes the usability of Gnome 3 totally infeasible for a number of users who are heavy terminal users and who have some specific nvidia graphics cards. I've just migrated to Linux Mint 12 and installed the latest nvidia driver only to find out that this bug still persists. OS: Linux Mint 12 Video card: GeForce GTS 250M Nvidia driver: 295.33 Mutter version: 3.2.1-0ubuntu2 It's a shame that the otherwise great Gnome 3 experience is totally negated by this bug. As for now I have no choice but using XFCE as a viable alternative. Just let me know if you wanna have a GeForce GTS 250 and I'll buy it for you or if you want me to donate specifically for this issue to be fixed. It'd be very disappointing to see the next release of Linux Mint having this exact bug, leaving Gnome 3 useless. Sigh... PS: You may want to set the status of this bug to CONFIRMED and its severity to BLOCKER.
It's not a blocker, as it won't be fixed before 3.4 release, and can't be: it's a mutual effort between the Clutter developers at Intel, and the nVidia driver developers. It will take some time. Use the CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling hack as above. It turns out that nVidia's driver and the FOSS drivers do some things differently, and in order to fix the issues, we have to invent entirely new GL extensions: https://github.com/rib/gl-extensions/blob/master/GLX_EXT_buffer_age.txt So hang in there.
I hate to be the noisy wheel, but has there been any motion on this?
It's been a while, Jasper. Any update? I'm curently using Fedora 17 with nvidia 304.37 and gnome-shell-3.4.1-5.fc17.i686
Having the same issue with MacBook Air running Ubuntu 12.04 and GNOME Shell.
Same here, I still have this issue on Ubuntu 12.04.
(In reply to comment #20) > It's not a blocker, as it won't be fixed before 3.4 release, and can't be: it's > a mutual effort between the Clutter developers at Intel, and the nVidia driver > developers. It will take some time. Use the > CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling hack as above. It turns > out that nVidia's driver and the FOSS drivers do some things differently, and > in order to fix the issues, we have to invent entirely new GL extensions: > > https://github.com/rib/gl-extensions/blob/master/GLX_EXT_buffer_age.txt > > So hang in there. We got this now (clutter from git required). See bug 669122 . Will be in 3.8.
I have a very similar issues with Gnome Shell 3.12.2 and nvidia 337.25 in Arch Linux. Is there any simple way to verify if this is indeed regression?
(In reply to comment #26) > I have a very similar issues with Gnome Shell 3.12.2 and nvidia 337.25 in Arch > Linux. Is there any simple way to verify if this is indeed regression? Probably this https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728464
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 728464 ***