FS#11754 - QT4 + nVidia + CompizFusion = XDamage redraw delays

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Bart (n0rdik0) - Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 18:52 GMT
Last edited by Pierre Schmitz (Pierre) - Friday, 05 December 2008, 10:41 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Extra
Status Closed
Assigned To Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Jan de Groot (JGC)
Pierre Schmitz (Pierre)
Architecture i686
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version None
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Description:
KDE4 + nVidia (GF Mobile 8400) + CompizFusion cause redraw problems, only in QT apps. In the menus, elements keep being "highlighted" even after then mouse is over other element, konqueror content gets corrupted when scrolling and konsole/yakuake doesnt show last output (after a ls I have to hit enter a second time to see the result). Any way of forcing redraw fixes the problem: hiding/showing yakuake, moving or resizing konqueror, konsole or whatever qt app it is. No problem with gtk apps for instance. Other QT apps like KDE control center, kmix, and similar also get similar corruption, the last action is not redrawn correctly and I have to move/resize the window to update it's contents.

I starts happening "gradually". For a minute or so it works ok. Then, after issuing a command in yakuake makes the cursor go to the left but the results and the prompt show a couple seconds later. After a couple of times working with this kind of delay, it just stops showing the results, having to hit enter again or hide/show yakuake to see the results.
Btw, menu issues only happen with Klearlooks style, havent seen Oxygen redrawn incorrectly.

In firefox (well, actually GranParadiso) the only problem are images and only when showing an image alone (not in a page), the upper 90% of the image is completely black. As usually, moving/resizing firefox makes the image show properly, or for that matter, showing/hiding yakuake as it overlaps with the browser. Images in html pages work ok.

Googling didnt help, no one seems to have this issue, just performance problems.

None of this happens with Kwin, just with compiz-fusion.

Before installing Arch, I have used Mandriva for a while and it didnt show this issue, neither 2008.1 nor 2009. Unfortunately I don't know the versions used there, but I could reinstall Mandriva in a spare partition and run any kind of test if I would help.

Additional info:
* package version(s)
Relevant versions:
QT: 4.4.2-3
kdebase: 4.1.2-1
nVidia: 177.80
CompizFusion: 0.7.8-1
Tried to downgrade everithing a bit, with packages from: http://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/linux/sunsite.unc-mirror/distributions/archlinux/$repo/os/i686 (QT 4.4.1-1, KDE 4.1.0-2, CompizFusion 0.7.6-1) didn't help a bit. Downgrading nVidia to 173xx breaks compiz, had to enable --indirect-rendering flag. That did help, making the issue *far* less frequent, I even thought it was fixed but after 5 hours I got the error again (screenshot attached). Al least its usable again but performance is worse than with 177.80. Beta drivers 177.67 behave exactly the same as 177.80: unusable yakuake/konsole/konqueror.

* config and/or log files etc.
relevant section from xorg.conf:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
# Option "NoLogo" "True"
# Option "TripleBuffer" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "True"
Option "BackingStore" "True"
Option "PixmapCacheSize" "1000000"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "DamageEvents" "True"
Option "AllowIndirectPixmaps" "True"
EndSection
However, enabling/disabling any one or even all of the options doesnt change the issue. Changing InitialPixmapPlacement and Glyph cache doesnt change the behavior either.


Steps to reproduce:
Start a KDE4 session. Activate compiz-fusion (either at start or trough fusion-icon). After a few minutes "xdamaged" parts of windows dont get redrawn properly.


I can provide any additional information if needed.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Pierre Schmitz (Pierre)
Friday, 05 December 2008, 10:41 GMT
Reason for closing:  Upstream
Additional comments about closing:  Maybe nvidia fixes this with one of the next driver releaeses.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 18:54 GMT
Screenshot of several menu positions still selected, failed to be redrawn after cursor moved away.
   snap1.png (195.8 KiB)
Comment by Pierre Schmitz (Pierre) - Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 18:57 GMT
Those are known bugs in the nvidia drivers. And only nvidia themself can fix it.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 19:04 GMT
I dont remember having this bug in Mandriva, nor reading anything about this kind of issue on the net. In Mandriva the problem was mostly performance, it worked choppy but it worked, so I thought it might be some compilation flag in compiz or QT or that kind of setting.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 20:52 GMT
In case it helps, I tried kwin again and QT apps work ok (well, with usual performance issues), but firefox still has problems with images (not in an html page). Screenshot attached.
   snap2.png (122.1 KiB)
Comment by Jan de Groot (JGC) - Wednesday, 15 October 2008, 21:37 GMT
These problems are known with nvidia. KDE's kwin compositor also shows weird bugs when using with Nvidia drivers.
Comment by Jacopo (jacopo_c) - Thursday, 16 October 2008, 13:55 GMT
I confirm these bugs on my system with Gnome.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Thursday, 16 October 2008, 15:21 GMT
Well, I'm a KDE user, I only tried Gnome for couple minutes with this configuration and I didn't see anything wrong, thus I included QT in the title. I don't see any obvious way of changing the title, is there any?
Comment by Jacopo (jacopo_c) - Friday, 17 October 2008, 10:32 GMT
This bug was so annoying (especially in Firefox) that I have switched back to 177.73 driver which works fine on my Gnome system (with GeForce 8400M GS). I'm going to wait that nvidia guys will fix the problems.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Friday, 17 October 2008, 12:47 GMT
Version 177.73? Is it a beta version of 177 or you meant 173.14? I tried beta version 177.67 and I didnt notice any change. Legacy version 173.14 however, did (almost) fix some issues but worsened performance :(
Comment by Jacopo (jacopo_c) - Friday, 17 October 2008, 12:59 GMT
Sorry, I meant 173.14.12-2. With this driver I haven't noticed any decrease in performance, but I don't use very graphics-intensive applications.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Friday, 17 October 2008, 14:05 GMT
It must be a QT4-GTK issue then. I noticed the performance hit in 2d tasks like yakuake scrolling or run-dialog (krunner it is? alt+f2 cmd) resizing, both being QT apps. Anyway, it is known that QT4 doesnt work well with nVidia cards performace-wise, so it's not the point of the bug report ;)
I'm going to try Mandriva again this weekend, IIRC Mandriva had no issues using 177.67 driver, so I think it may be some workaround they use to make things work.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Friday, 17 October 2008, 21:01 GMT
I'm running MandrivaOne live CD and the performance is great, and no problems at all. I used the regural installed version of Mandriva the last month or so and I didn't experience any of these artifacts. The package versions on the live CD are:
- QT: 4.4.3
- KDE: 4.1.2
- nVidia: 177.67 Beta
- CompizFusion: 0.7.8
So, the only difference I see is QT version 4.4.3 instead of 4.4.2. I can't explain the problems in Firefox, but in Mandriva firefox also work flawlessly. ¿Does Firefox depend on QT to render images?
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Saturday, 18 October 2008, 18:22 GMT
I've just upgraded QT to 4.4.3 in my Arch installation and it's not solved yet. However I used yakuake for some time and it hasn't failed so far, so there is an improvement there. Firefox still can't show a plain image correctly and the Klearlooks KDE style has still problems with the menus (see attachment). My guess is that it must be two different issues, one with firefox and other one with QT.
I don't know if I should open a new bug report for the firefox glitch, any suggestion will be appreciated.
   snap4.png (446.9 KiB)
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Sunday, 19 October 2008, 14:24 GMT
status with nvidia 177.80-2? There are lots of fixes that should make KDE faster
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Sunday, 19 October 2008, 21:46 GMT
Well, I checked my version of the driver and I can confirm that it is 177.80-2. I wasn't sure when I installed it so I checked and the package in /var/cache was created October 15, before the creation of this report, so all the time the version was 177.80-2, I should have specified that in the original list.
BTW, after 1 day using QT 4.4.3 I can say that it's perfectly usable, almost no problems with konsole/yakuake and the oxygen style work well as always. The easiest to reproduce and most persistent problem is the Klearlooks style menu selecting, but as long as oxygen is used, is just a little infrequent annoyance.
Firefox still has problems with images, I've noticed it is only the case with scaled down images. When I click on the image to zoom it to 100% it shows ok, and when I zoom back to scaled down, the black regions reappear.
Comment by Bart (n0rdik0) - Monday, 01 December 2008, 01:55 GMT
Just in case someone cares, update 177.82 of nvidia drivers fixes the firefox image corruption issues, Qt4 apps remain all screwed up.

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