[SOLVED] Debian Sid & GNOME 3.21 screen flickering

[SvetlinZarev]

Hello!

Yesterday I updated my Debian Sid, but after the update my screen started to flicker (see the video). It looks like it's constantly switching between two buffers - one with the old content and one with the new. Has anyone experienced that issue ? The update updated my kernel to 4.7, but I tried with my old 4.6 which was working fine, but the issue persisted. Also it's reproducible with the GNOME Classic mode.

Debian Sid,
Linux 4.7,
Gnome 3.21
Intel HD4000 (i915)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0HMdB_Gbgg
(you might want to mute the video before playing, sorry for the audio)

Kind regards,
Svetlin

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Have you tried removing xserver-xorg-video-intel, as per the advice on the package page?

[SvetlinZarev]

Have you tried removing xserver-xorg-video-intel, as per the advice on the package page?

I've just tried that and the result is a bit better ... almost

Now GDM crashes and restarts when I try to use the X11 mode. The Wayland mode works almost fine though, but applications like firefox do not start. Also the desktop is much more stable and there is no flicker when there ar eno running applications. And nautilus works fine. But some applications are still flickering - for instance GNOME Terminal, and when they are running they make the whole desktop flicker, although it's stable without them

PS: Actually I had some xorg conf file for the intel driver. When I removed it, the X11 mode was working again, but still flickering like hell

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Now GDM crashes and restarts when I try to use the X11 mode. The Wayland mode works almost fine though, but applications like firefox do not start.

What error messages are listed in the relevant logs?

[SvetlinZarev]

Now GDM crashes and restarts when I try to use the X11 mode. The Wayland mode works almost fine though, but applications like firefox do not start.

What error messages are listed in the relevant logs?

It was because Xorg was not able to find the intel driver:

PS: Actually I had some xorg conf file for the intel driver. When I removed it, the X11 mode was working again, but still flickering like hell

I had SNA enabled in that conf file, nothing more. When I removed it, the X11 mode was working again. There were no errors in its log, but still flickering like before.

PS: Although the wayland mode is much more flicker-free GNOME does flicker occasionally - for instance when I access the shutdown menu. So I guess it;s not x11 specific, but don;t know how to find out the root cause.

[WTRXGamer]

Just discovered this bug on Debian testing. I completely reinstalled Debian Jessie, and there was no screen flicker, however after updating back to testing, the screen started to flicker again. I have also discovered that this may temporarily cause the screen to flicker in BIOS, so do not start worrying that your LCD is now broken.

I'm currently digging to find which package is causing this, and will update when I figure it out.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Have you tried forcing the UXA acceleration method?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/In ... SNA_issues

[SvetlinZarev]

Just discovered this bug on Debian testing. I completely reinstalled Debian Jessie, and there was no screen flicker, however after updating back to testing, the screen started to flicker again. I have also discovered that this may temporarily cause the screen to flicker in BIOS, so do not start worrying that your LCD is now broken.

I'm currently digging to find which package is causing this, and will update when I figure it out.

Hmm, It works fine on everything before GDM. Even when it flickers on X11 I can just ctrl+alt+f5 to switch to a terminal and there is no flicker there. The flicker is available only on GUI components (lol, I made it sound like a feature )

Have you tried forcing the UXA acceleration method?

No, I'll try it later today. Thanks.

[SvetlinZarev]

I've tried both SNA (with and without TearFree), UXA and NoAccel, but there was no difference. Also tried with DRI 2 and 3 and still no change. The flicker is present even on wayland , so I guess it's not X11 issue. Also I had no problems with my 4.6 kernel, but now the flicker is present with it as well, so I ruled out the kernel. The issues is present even on the GnomeClassic mode. Does it use Mutter ?If it uses it it might be Mutter that is broken. If not, I guess the issue might be in GTK itself.

PS: I run the glxgears app and it didn't flicker. Also the video playback using the opengl(-hq) and vaapi outputs on MPV worked fine without flicker. I didn't test other video outputs.

[SvetlinZarev]

After todays opdate to gnome 3.21.92 the wayland mode is much more flicker free than before, but the X mode is still unusable. Unfortunately the issue is still present

[simen]

I'm having this problem as well, after dist-upgrading my laptop. Removing xserver-xorg-video-intel makes X not load at all (I don't get a display manager). The computer has been rolling along with Debian testing since I got it (early 2014, when testing was jessie).
As a temporary solution, I'm using xfce4 with lightdm, which is working without any issues.

--Simen

* Here is apt's log of the upgrade that caused the calamity on my machine:

Code: Select all

Start-Date: 2016-09-16  10:38:13
Commandline: apt-get dist-upgrade
Install: libmutter0i:amd64 (3.21.91-2, automatic), libglew2.0:amd64 (2.0.0-2, automatic)
Upgrade: mesa-utils:amd64 (8.3.0-2, 8.3.0-2+b1), gir1.2-mutter-3.0:amd64 (3.20.3-2, 3.21.91-2), mutter-common:amd64 (3.20.3-2, 3.21.91-2), gnome-shell-common:amd64 (3.20.3-1, 3.21.91-2), libgltf-0.0-0v5:amd64 (0.0.2-4+b1, 0.0.2-4+b2), lightspark:amd64 (0.7.2+git20150512-2.1+b3, 0.7.2+git20150512-2.1+b4), lightspark-common:amd64 (0.7.2+git20150512-2.1+b3, 0.7.2+git20150512-2.1+b4), gnome-shell:amd64 (3.20.3-1+b1, 3.21.91-2), mutter:amd64 (3.20.3-2, 3.21.91-2)
Remove: libmutter0h:amd64 (3.20.3-2)
End-Date: 2016-09-16  10:38:18

[SvetlinZarev]

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=837786

[SvetlinZarev]

For anyone experiencing that issue, the root cause lies in /etc/environment. Years ago I've added CLUTTER_PAINT=disable-clipped-redraws:disable-culling as a cure for tearing in gnome3, but now the cure has turned into a poison. Removing that property fixed the issue for me.

[simen]

Thank you! That worked for me, as well.

--Simen