Skylake Screen Resolution problems Debian 8.x

[shewhorn]

Wow... it's a little more strange than I thought... so, the wifi signal meter is gone. If I ping something like google, that fails, but if I go to the system settings in the upper right hand corner and click on my wifi connection, it shows it as being connected to my router. If I try to use the wireless on/off switch (also doubles as the Printscreen button so you need to hit function-Printscreen to toggle wireless on/off) it disables tap to click on the trackpad, although the settings indicates it's on. Toggling it in the settings interface does not get it back.

[shewhorn]

Power Management needs work. If the battery gets low, instead of hibernating, it just lets the battery die potentially losing work, or leaving the system in a bad state.

Chromium... behaves better than IceWeasel by leaps and bounds but still has some glitching and strange behavior. Fortunately watching videos seems to be good.

[dilberts_left_nut]

Nothing in Jessie is going to get "work" to solve any of that.
Newer kernels, as they appear in backports, might help but bleeding edge hardware is not a good match for Debian stable.

[shewhorn]

That's not what this thread is about.

[shewhorn]

Another observation re: audio quality... it's better under Windows. Also, the foreground application affects noise. I'm writing a little effects processing app using the Jack Audio Connection Kit. If I run the app and leave the command line as the foreground app, I hear lots of clicking artifacts... almost as if someone had attempted to make a mechanical hard drive noise simulator that simulates the thrashing of the head. If however, I bring Eclipse to the foreground after launch the app from the command line, there's a lot less of this noise. I can sometimes hear this clicking when playing back videos. This noise is not present anywhere under Windows 10 interestingly enough.

At first I thought it was just really poor analog electronics design on the XPS 13 but everything sounds fine running Windows (which actually surprised me as this sounds like EMI/RFI, not a driver issue). I'll be curious to try out the 4.4 kernel whenever that becomes available in experimental to see if it addresses any of this.

[cuchumino]

Well, it's been a couple of weeks. 4.3 kernel takes the cake. No crashes or freezes on Sid, and my problems with screen resolution and graphics rendering have disappeared with 4.3 experimental kernel. Although, not ideal that I'm pulling this package from experimental, I can live with it while 4.3 trickles down to Sid.

I should clarify, I do have some problems with some graphics artifacts on chrome, as well as with some graphic artifacts when using both 3d rendering and trying to watch some kind of video, but... definitely tolerable, and not a show stopper.

[garthylou]

Hello all,

I just installed a 4.3 kernel from this link http://www.exton.se/?p=593 on my Jessie.It works well, I installed guc and dmc too from the 01.org website. But I don't see how to activate 3D rendering. Xorg indicates that only soft rendering is activated.
Have I to upgrade all the stack MESA, Xserver, etc ? I attempted this few couple of weeks but it was difficult without to break the system. Do you have any feedback on this ?

Thank you

[gradinaruvasile]

Most likely you need update drm, mesa, xserver-xorg-video-intel too. xserver-xorg-video-intel has a newer version in backports, but mesa, drm is not that simple -
I compiled it you most likely compile it. Mesa especially is fun on 64 bit since you will have to compile both 64 and 32 bits versions. And you might need newer libva version too for mesa. I compiled mesa from git 2 weeks ago and its working (needed drm, libva to upgrade too).

[garthylou]

grrr...
I wanted to compile mesa, i updated libdrm, libva... But to install libvdpau-dev from testing (a requirement to compile mesa), I have to remove lot of packages
Do not say me that I have to downgrade my packages :'( :'( to compile it ?

[gradinaruvasile]

If you use stable DO NOT install packages from testing/unstable/experimental. There the packages dependencies/versions change pretty fast sometimes and are NOT compatible with stable (some might but dont count on it).
First, check the official backports if they have something you need, and if not, then:

My advice is that, if you really want to compile mesa, compile everything that is needed and its newer too. Build .deb packages to keep track of your changes.
I built deb packages for everything i needed and i can keep track of what and where was changed (in case i need to roll back) and make sure system updates not overwrite my "work". I personally built the packages with checkinstall, probably not the "Debian way", but they do what they supposed to (that is, provide the file list for apt and a newer version than the default ones, preventing tampering with them).

- For mesa in Debian you have a truckload of packages and i took the easy route of creating one package named mesa and i specified in checkinstall that it replaces the whole gang of libgl1-* & co, including the -dev packages. It was a heck of a lot of trial and error - create the .deb, dpkg -i it, read error, add offending package with coflicting files to the replace list, rinse and repeat. Oh, and 32 bit mesa is another fun thing as some needed -dev packages cannot be installed both 64 and 32 bit versions side by side so i created a i386 chroot and did the 32 bit building there.
For some reason the 32 bit "mesa" package was not a true "i386" packege so i had to give it a different name (mesa32 for example) to avoid collisions with the 64 bit "mesa". This was in fact the case for all the packages i created with checkinstall.
- Other packages like libva or libvdpau are not that hard (although they still span accross few packages in debian).

Its an additional nuisance, but it helps a lot. Also i suggest creating shell scripts for building and creating .debs after you managed to build a working .deb file.
Also make sure that you replace the exactly same files that are in the system's packages to make sure only the new ones get loaded and old ones are not in the way (also if you experiment with installations make really sure you dont leave older built libraries in /usr/local or /usrl/lib for example because if subsequently build libs in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ the /usr/local ones will get loaded first and mess stuff up).

Note that if you want to roll back you will have to uninstall your "mesa" package then reinstall the whole shebang - before removal, save the list from the "replaces" section and then reinstall all of them (aptitude show packagename shows the replacves list too).
The simplest testing methods are (opengl, respectively vaapi hw decoding capabilities):

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glxinfo | grep Open

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vainfo

[GarryRicketson]

https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

[cuchumino]

grrr...
I wanted to compile mesa, i updated libdrm, libva... But to install libvdpau-dev from testing (a requirement to compile mesa), I have to remove lot of packages
Do not say me that I have to downgrade my packages :'( :'( to compile it ?

From the experience I got through working and sweating through this thread, I have to second other people's advice about not doing this.

It's a pain in the butt to try to compile this on your own.

It's also tempting to try to cherry pick certain packages to try to get mesa to compile onto stable, but it'll break a bunch of other things from Debian stable. Plus once you do that, you'll have a "Franken-debian" (read that somewhere) that will be unique to yourself. You won't be able to leverage the Debian community to pinpoint your problem quickly, and concisely.

Your best bet if you want 3D rendering and get timely bug updates, go with Sid.

If you want, you could also go towards "testing". I haven't been on testing recently on this system, but from what I read recently on Distrowatch, it seems they are already on 4.3 kernel, meaning, you shouldn't have that much of a problem with 3d rendering. But not sure if you'll run into any showstopper bugs for your useage.

[garthylou]

Hello all,

Thank you for your helping. I attempted to compile mesa with checkinstal and create mesa32 but it was unsuccessfull. After reading your last posts, I agree with the fact that if I use Debian Jessie (so stable), putting franken-package is incoherent. So I upgraded to Stretch, and all is running perfectly.

For other users : I advice to perform this upgrade, it is easy and perfect !

[mikorist]

This is a solution in my case on the server:

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# sudo lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 1912 (rev 06)
	Subsystem: Fujitsu Technology Solutions Device 121c
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Device a12f (rev 31)

motherboard is

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sudo dmidecode  | grep -A4 '^Base'
Base Board Information
	Manufacturer: FUJITSU
	Product Name: D3401-H1
	Version: S26361-D3401-H1 

/etc/default/grub

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GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=1
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

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echo deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list

sudo apt-get -y update && apt-get -y upgrade

sudo apt-get -t jessie-backports install -y linux-image-amd64 linux-headers-amd64 firmware-misc-nonfree xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-intel

reboot

Perhaps someone help this. It took me a long time to find a way get rid of 640x480 as a max resolution . . .

[stevepusser]

Skylake should also need the newer mesa (added since this thread started) in jessie-backports for full performance, which you can set up by following these instructions: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1185

Also test before and after the fix and reboot by installing inxi and looking at the output of "inxi -G". Poor acceleration is shown by "gallium" and "llvmpipe" for the Intel GLX, a good one looks like mine:

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           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 driver: intel Resolution: 1920x1080@60.01hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.2

Now I can also use va-api from backports in combination with QMPlay2 from my OBS multimedia backports video and play 4K (2160p) mp4 test videos downloaded from Youtube with no CPU use at all--QMPlay2 reports 3% CPU use no matter what low or high video resolution it's playing.

[mikorist]

Thanks to this additional information.

completely solution:

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echo deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jessie-backports.list

sudo apt-get -y update && apt-get -y upgrade

sudo apt-get -t jessie-backports install -y linux-image-amd64 linux-headers-amd64 firmware-misc-nonfree xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-video-intel libegl1-mesa libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri

reboot

inxi -b

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CPU:         Quad core Intel Core i7-6700 (-HT-MCP-) clocked at 3975 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Device 1912
                Display Server: X.org 1.16.4 drivers intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
                Resolution: 2560x1440@60.00hz
               GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 530  (Skylake GT2)
               GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.2
Network:  Card: Intel Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM driver: e1000e

[stevepusser]

Now you're cooking! Do you want to try getting the va-api acceleration working? I have to admit that the only players I can get it really working on so far are the mpv and qmplay2 from my own multimedia backports repo: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=127574

Or you can see what packages I've currently got in there: https://build.opensuse.org/project/show ... evepassert

[cuchumino]

Skylake should also need the newer mesa (added since this thread started) in jessie-backports for full performance, which you can set up by following these instructions: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1185

Also test before and after the fix and reboot by installing inxi and looking at the output of "inxi -G". Poor acceleration is shown by "gallium" and "llvmpipe" for the Intel GLX, a good one looks like mine:

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           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 driver: intel Resolution: 1920x1080@60.01hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2) GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 13.0.2

Now I can also use va-api from backports in combination with QMPlay2 from my OBS multimedia backports video and play 4K (2160p) mp4 test videos downloaded from Youtube with no CPU use at all--QMPlay2 reports 3% CPU use no matter what low or high video resolution it's playing.

You know, funny you should mention this. I recently got a Kaby Lake's integrated video for a work laptop, and remembered this thread. I got a lot of newer things from backports, but I remembered that there was a missing library.

For the fun of it I tried to install mesa libraries from backports to see if they were there. And yes! They were!

3d rendering works amazing on the machine.

Back when I started this thread for skylake, I don't remember if mesa libs were on backports, or if I didn't know enough to install them. I think that mesa just wasn't in backports at the time so there was no way to get rendering unless you went to "sid" or "testing".

Since this is a work laptop, I'm glad I got this to work with backports only.

[kikbuu]

I'm experiencing the same problem with Skylake base on Debian 8 Jessie,I have 2 monitor,one with hdmi and other with vga, but it seem my Debian can only dectect maximum resolution at 1280x1024. I want to extend desktop by using 2 monitor, But seem in Display it only dectect one monitor,although at same time both screen was on (cloned).Btw Here my kernel Debian 3.16.36-1+deb8u2, using with KDE 4.14.2.

Should I try this backport also to get both of my screen extend desktop ?

[Inixi]

@kikbuu
I had the same problem on Debian Jessie and the solution was to install newer kernel (from jessie-backports) because stable 3.16 is not able to work with two monitors connected to the system.