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[SOLVED]GNOME flickers, crashes Debian 9.3

Linux Kernel, Network, and Services configuration.
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Wheelerof4te
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[SOLVED]GNOME flickers, crashes Debian 9.3

#1 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Just to let everyone else here know, after few Debian 9.3 clean installs, I've verified a huge problem with the new upstream kernel. More on Reddit, together with an image:
GNOME crashes Reddit

Mine was the same problem.

TL;DR: GNOME would flicker after opening new terminal window, and then crash after few minutes. It borked my upgrade to Buster in an attempt to fix it. I am on Fedora now, so really can't help with a bug report. I wanted to verify this, and since someone else has the same problem...I think it's a grave bug related to kernel.
GPU is Intel Broadwell HD graphics.

EDIT7: Update: Linux 4.9.80-1 (2018-02-04) from stretch-proposed updates fixes this bug. You can wait for 9.4 or add stretch-proposed repo and upgrade now.
EDIT6: Update Jan 26th: Bug is tagged as "patch available", so expect a fix soon.
EDIT1: How to reproduce: Open Terminal, switch to root and start typing. Wait with Terminal opened.
EDIT2: Workaround number 1 is to try installing a kernel from backports. To be safe, switch to tty using CTL+Alt+F2, then install and reboot. Workaround number 2 (only if upgrading from 9.2) is to hold the linux package using:

Code: Select all

apt-mark hold linux-image-amd64
or

Code: Select all

apt-mark hold linux-image-686-pae
depending on arch.
You can then upgrade the rest normally. You can also boot to a older kernel by selecting "advanced options for Debian" from the grub menu, if you ended up upgrading linux.
EDIT3: Bug is already reported 2 hours ago as of this writing. Same thing:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=884116
I hope there is a fix soon. Fedora is showing it's bad quirks right now, I need a stable system.
EDIT4: As of December 24th, this bug is fixed in the linux security update.
EDIT5: I spoke too soon, the problem is still there. Anoying, but you will have to wait for the next point release.
Last edited by Wheelerof4te on 2018-02-10 12:43, edited 11 times in total.

Wheelerof4te
Posts: 1454
Joined: 2015-08-30 20:14

Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#2 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Similar issues described here.

From what I have gathered, there is a regression related to either Intel GPUs or 5th gen Broadwell CPUs. I've seen kernel regressions getting fixed in regular security updates. Fingers crossed :)
Last edited by Wheelerof4te on 2017-12-15 22:20, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#3 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Wheelerof4te wrote:Fingers crossed
As you are suffering from the problem, you could help pin the regression down:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel/GitBisect

Good luck!
deadbang

Wheelerof4te
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Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#4 Post by Wheelerof4te »

I sadly have no experience in debugging. I'm experienced Debian user, but not a developer.
But hey, it at least didn't fry my BIOS.

EDIT: Someone at debian-kernel maillists already did gitbisect:
I tried using "git bisect" on the upstream linux-stable repository.
It points the finger at the following commit:

7de694782cbe7840f2c0de6f1e70f41fc1b8b6e8 is the first bad commit
commit 7de694782cbe7840f2c0de6f1e70f41fc1b8b6e8
Author: Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankho...@linux.intel.com>
Date: Thu Oct 19 17:13:40 2017 +0200

drm/i915: Do not rely on wm preservation for ILK watermarks

commit 8777b927b92cf5b6c29f9f9d3c737addea9ac8a7 upstream.

The original intent was to preserve watermarks as much as possible
in intel_pipe_wm.raw_wm, and put the validated ones in intel_pipe_wm.wm.

It seems this approach is insufficient and we don't always preserve
the raw watermarks, so just use the atomic iterator we're already using
to get a const pointer to all bound planes on the crtc.

Bugzilla: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102373
Signed-off-by: Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankho...@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Ville Syrjälä <ville.syrj...@linux.intel.com>
Reviewed-by: Matt Roper <matthew.d.ro...@intel.com>
Link:
https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch ... .intel.com
(cherry picked from commit 28283f4f359cd7cfa9e65457bb98c507a2cd0cd0)
Signed-off-by: Rodrigo Vivi <rodrigo.v...@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gre...@linuxfoundation.org>

:040000 040000 072d8db147e7c6feb397661767c67acc543fc7e1
c73d489829736f47f7186bbde766887e5a88b130 M drivers

Indeed, using this commit provokes the error, while the parent commit
(b35783871190a8fcf31c2216638b92bcb2bf152e) does not (at least for me).

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Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#5 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Wheelerof4te wrote:I sadly have no experience in debugging. I'm experienced Debian user, but not a developer.
Debian is a community distribution and bisects are not particularly tricky to do but they are time-consuming so I completely understand any reluctance.
Ask not what Debian can do for you, ask what you can do for Debian
:mrgreen:
deadbang

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Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#6 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Some other insights from the debian-kernel:
I tried using the Intel driver instead of modesetting, as it helped for some people, but it didn't help in my case.

I tried a newer kernel, 4.13.0-0.bpo.1 from backports: it helped a bit. Where 4.9.0-4 froze very quickly, sometimes right at the SDDM login other times after less than a minute, 4.13 could last several hours and some suspend/resume cycles. But it also had the same issue eventually.
I enabled the IOMMU (intel_iommu=on), and it caught something. There seem to be an access error before the freeze:

[14312.568400] DMAR: DRHD: handling fault status reg 3
[14312.568406] DMAR: [DMA Write] Request device [00:02.0] fault addr 1197000 [fault reason 23] Unknown [14319.871599] [drm] GPU HANG: ecode 8:0:0x85dffffb, in Xorg [1265], reason: Hang on rcs0, action: reset
[14319.871639] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
[14327.894140] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
[14337.878141] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
[14349.878136] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang
[14448.886146] drm/i915: Resetting chip after gpu hang

So where I observed the "CPU pipe A FIFO underrun", now I don't see it anymore but it's replaced by this IOMMU error (DMAR), followed by the GPU HAN
All this on an up to date Debian Stretch 9.3, on a Thinkpad X1 with 5th gen CPU (i5-5200U). I use SDDM with KDE5/Plasma.

For now I'm back on kernel 4.9.0-3, which is the last usable for me. I doesn't mean the underlying issue is not there (bug report #859639 has the issue starting with 4.9.0-1), maybe some little changes makes the issue probability changes widely depending on system and configurations?
The way I see it, mostly Broadwell iGPUs are affected, since we aren't seeing too much of complaining on the forum.

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Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#7 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Downgrading the kernel to 4.9.51 does seem to fix the issue for now. I'm on Debian again. Good to be back :)

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Re: GNOME flickers, crashes on 9.3 Stable

#8 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Wheelerof4te wrote:Downgrading the kernel to 4.9.51
Running an outdated kernel is not wise because it will contain known vulnerabilities, this is one of the reasons why the backported kernel versions are discouraged in general use.

Why not try Liquorix instead?

They stay very close to upstream (more than the backports team can) and so will always have the latest fixes.
deadbang

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Re: [SOLVED]GNOME flickers, crashes Debian 9.3

#9 Post by Wheelerof4te »

This bug is fixed in Linux version 4.9.77+:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/ ... 00326.html

Ben Hutchings should upload it soon even before new Stretch point release for the added Spectre mitigations.


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