Graphics crashing in Cinnamon with some application's windows

English Hardware
1

I started exploring Leap 15.0 Cinnamon. I installed it on a laptop with Intel graphics and it worked fine, so I installed the same DVD on my desktop. The desktop is a generic Gateway computer with ATI Radeon graphics. The monitor has normal, reasonable resolution, well within the graphic card capabilities without breaking a sweat.

Over the years, I’ve installed a ton of different distros on it. This is the first one that has ever had graphics issues. I currently have four distros installed (the other three are all Mint or Ubuntu), and Leap is the only one with a video issue, so it isn’t a hardware problem.

The symptoms: With a variety of apps (e.g., System Settings Control Center, YaST, YaST 1-Click Installer, etc.), when a new window is about to be rendered (e.g., dialog box, updated app window, etc.), the screen often winks off (black) for a few seconds, then comes back when the new window is rendered. Sometimes when the screen returns, the new window (and just that one window) is corrupted. You can read bits and pieces of it, but it’s mostly broken up with hash patterns. The symptoms are all characteristic of a graphics driver problem.

This is the first time I’ve run into Radeon graphics having a problem with Linux. This isn’t a new or exotic card; it’s an old, mundane card used as an OEM part by Gateway. The driver is whatever the installer chose.

The symptom doesn’t involve the entire screen. I can have a bunch of windows open. Certain apps have a problem rendering their windows while the rest of the screen is fine. That would suggest a compatibility issue between those apps and something like the windowing or compositing used in Cinnamon. However, they didn’t have an issue on the other computer, so the Radeon graphics seem to be at least a part of the problem.

I concurrently have Mint Cinnamon (also current version) installed on the desktop, and that doesn’t have an issue. So something specific to the difference between openSUSE and Mint underlies the problem.

Are there any alternate drivers for Radeon? Or if this issue isn’t new, is there a workaround or solution? Or does it suggest a potential culprit?

2

Any problems with other desktops in openSUSE? Cinnamon is not one of the main supported Desktops so not all that many are using it here.

3

Thanks for the response. If I get a chance, I’ll try a different desktop for diagnostic purposes. I’m kind of stuck with Cinnamon, though, so if it doesn’t work, other desktops won’t help.

4

OK, it looks like it’s definitely a video driver issue. I installed Leap Mate and it was even worse. During boot, there were periods of odd graphic noise patterns. When the desktop started to be rendered, there were long delays between the appearance of each icon, and everything was eventually rendered except for the menu icon. When I clicked in the blank space where it would be, the screen winked out black, then returned with the menu icon displayed and the menu open. Mouse action was in slow motion.

I tried rebooting several times with the same result. Then I tried booting with one of the older kernels in recovery mode. That ran for about a second, filling the screen with boot progress detail. All of that text was fuzzy to the point of being difficult to read. Then it hung in that state and required a hard power-button shut down.

I prepared the Mate test on a USB hard drive on the laptop and then booted from that on the desktop. So the normal boot could have been optimized for the laptop hardware, but the recovery mode boot should have tried the full array of drivers.

I’ll try recreating the USB drive installation entirely on the desktop, just for experimental completeness, but it looks like openSUSE fundamentally has a problem with the Radeon graphics.

5

On Mon 08 Apr 2019 03:26:03 AM CDT, fixer1234 wrote:

OK, it looks like it’s definitely a video driver issue. I installed
Leap Mate and it was even worse. During boot, there were periods of odd
graphic noise patterns. When the desktop started to be rendered, there
were long delays between the appearance of each icon, and everything was
eventually rendered except for the menu icon. When I clicked in the
blank space where it would be, the screen winked out black, then
returned with the menu icon displayed and the menu open. Mouse action
was in slow motion.

I tried rebooting several times with the same result. Then I tried
booting with one of the older kernels in recovery mode. That ran for
about a second, filling the screen with boot progress detail. All of
that text was fuzzy to the point of being difficult to read. Then it
hung in that state and required a hard power-button shut down.

I prepared the Mate test on a USB hard drive on the laptop and then
booted from that on the desktop. So the normal boot could have been
optimized for the laptop hardware, but the recovery mode boot should
have tried the full array of drivers.

I’ll try recreating the USB drive installation entirely on the desktop,
just for experimental completeness, but it looks like openSUSE
fundamentally has a problem with the Radeon graphics.

Hi
Are you running Xorg or Wayland?


echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLES 15 | GNOME Shell 3.26.2 | 4.12.14-150.14-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

6

Update (couldn’t figure out how to edit the previous post): I started to recreate the the Mate installation entirely on the desktop computer. Booting from the live session DVD, I didn’t encounter the graphic noise during boot, but once the desktop started to be rendered, the symptoms were the same, just faster. There was a short delay between each tray icon appearing, then a long delay (many seconds) before the menu icon was rendered, and the screen momentarily winked out before it appeared. Clicking the menu icon, the screen went black for several seconds until being rendered again with the menu open. So it’s confirmed that there is some incompatibility between Leap’s default graphics driver and my hardware.

7

Malcolm, went back in with the live session. The session type was reported as x11.

While I had the DVD in, I tried the Failsafe boot. The first line of output:

drm:radeon_init [radeon] ERROR no UMS support in radeon module!

That was followed by:

(bunch of numbers) ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
(bunch of numbers) ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)

Welcome to openSUSE Leap 15.0-kernel 4.12.14-lp150.12.4-default (tty1)

Localhost login: (prompt)

I removed the DVD and hit the power button, at which point it tried to resume the boot and failed.

But that first line seems to indicate that it doesn’t like my Radeon.

8

Hi
You don’t by chance have nomodeset in the GRUB command line options?


cat /etc/default/grub |grep GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX

You could also see if adding the following helps via YaST bootloader;


radeon.modeset=0
9

Malcolm, no nomodeset in the options. The only place I could find to add that code was on the optional kernel command line parameters, appending it to what what there. That didn’t make any difference. But at the start of booting I caught a flash of a message line that contained “can’t read configurations error”. Since what I did didn’t help, I went back and deleted the added code.

10

There are as many as three competent DDX drivers for a Radeon. Knowing exactly which Radeon model you have, and which DDX driver is in use might be very important to any who want to help. Best way to get this is running in an X session terminal of any kind the command:

inxi -GxxSM

Very likely inxi is not already installed, so do

zypper in inxi

first. You can redirect to a file if desired, then also optionally use the susepaste command to upload the file. The susepaste command is great for uploading /var/log/Xorg.0.log, which we very well might need as well.

IceWM is a very lightweight WM that is installed by default, good for testing whether the problem is driver or something else. It should already be available from the login greeter.

11

I just spent a lot of time writing a reply with the details. When I tried to preview it, the forum hung and it was lost. I’ll try again, and try to remember everything I posted, but my openSUSE experience is becoming very frustrating and time consuming. Sorry for the rant, but I’m evaluating Leap as a potential replacement for my OS, and this experience is not a promising start. I do appreciate the support here, though, and mrmazda, thanks for your input.

  • I installed inxi and got an error message that there were a number of missing dependencies, so the report would be incomplete. I can go back and install the missing stuff, but hopefully, the important stuff was in the report:
System:    Host: administrator-pc Kernel: 4.12.14-lp150.12.4-default x86_64
           bits: 64 gcc: 7.3.1
           Desktop: Cinnamon 3.6.7 (Gtk 3.22.30) dm: lightdm
           Distro: openSUSE Leap 15.0
Machine:   Device: desktop System: Gateway product: DX4300 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Gateway model: RS780 serial: N/A
           BIOS: American Megatrends v: P01-A3 date: 08/20/2009
           Chassis: type: 3 serial: N/A
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS780 [Radeon HD 3200]
           bus-ID: 01:05.0 chip-ID: 1002:9610
           Display Server: x11 (X.org 1.19.6 )
           drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev)
           tty size: 80x24
  • I couldn’t figure out how to access susepaste or where it might send things. I downloaded the log, but it’s too long to post. If someone can advise what is the important part, I can paste that, or let me know what provisions there are for sharing files (or instructions for susepaste).
  • Prior to this exercise, another symptom appeared (possibly after an update?). Any action that launched a new window created a blank, semi-transparent placeholder window. The system locked in that state for about a minute, then the display went blank for several seconds, then the rendered screen would appear.
  • In the original post, I described the eventually-rendered window as sometimes being corrupted. It’s possible that the pattern is from trying to render it with a wrong resolution.
  • I found the DE menu in the login screen. IceWM was not among the choices. The options were: Cinnamon, Cinnamon (software rendering), and Openbox. Openbox resulted in a cursor on a blank screen with nothing else being rendered for many minutes (required power button power-off to reboot). Cinnamon with software rendering had an effect. None of the previous symptoms occurred (no placeholder window, no screen winking out, no corrupted windows, no extremely long delays before rendering any action). However, it was like working in molasses. Screen rendering was in slow motion. So hopefully, this is diagnostic, but it doesn’t offer a viable solution.
12

4.12.14-lp150.12.4-default x86_64
says you haven’t updated to the latest kernel. There have been around 8 or so kernel updates since. Updating should be your place to start working through this:

sudo zypper ref; sudo zypper up

One of the inxi complaints, and IceWM absence, would be solved by this:

sudo zypper in Mesa-demo-x icewm icewm-default icewm-config-upstream

“Radeon” is not your problem, though your Radeon might need something that automagic is failing to provide. I have a similar Radeon on a similar age motherboard working just fine on 15.0:

> inxi -GxxSM
System:    Host: fi965 Kernel: 4.12.14-lp150.12.48-default x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.3.1 Desktop: Trinity R14.0.5
           tk: Qt 3.5.0 wm: Twin dm: startx Distro: openSUSE Leap 15.0
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P5B-Deluxe v: Rev 1.xx serial: MB-1234567890 BIOS: American Megatrends v: 1238
           date: 09/30/2008
Graphics:  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV620 PRO [Radeon HD 3470] vendor: Dell driver: radeon v: kernel
           bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 1002:95c0
           Display: server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa alternate: ati resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RV620 (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.12.14-lp150.12.48-default LLVM 5.0.1) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.0.2 compat-v: 3.0
           direct render: Yes

Yours should look much like this, but only if run from X. My Radeon is the same age as yours, but on a separate PCIe card rather than built into the motherboard. I have slightly older, considerably older, and slightly and somewhat newer Radeons working nicely on 15.0 too (all with xf86-video-ati not installed).

Susepaste was supposed to make it easier for you without having properly working X. You can paste Xorg.0.log using a web browser on any of the following (among others):

http://susepaste.org/
http://paste.opensuse.org/
http://pastebin.centos.org/
http://paste.debian.net/
http://paste.fedoraproject.org
http://pastebin.com/
http://paste.ubuntu.com/
https://gist.github.com/

If simply updating doesn’t get the job done, next to try is this:

sudo zypper rm xf86-video-ati

After this point is probably the best time to upload Xorg.0.log, unless activity to this point eliminates all trouble.

It may be your onboard IGP video requires a special boot option (iomem=??? to be determined). Please try the above first. More suggestions to come if needed…

13

I executed all of the suggested code, testing after each item to see if that solved it. Nope. All of the symptoms are still there.

If it’s diagnostic, I logged in with IceWM and played around for a few minutes. I opened apps that seemed to reliably cause problems in Cinnamon. IceWM had none of the problems. It sounds like that suggests that the issue isn’t my hardware or drivers per se. It must be something in Cinnamon, but perhaps whatever it is in Cinnamon has problems with my hardware or its drivers.

I uploaded the log to paste.opensuse.org: SUSE Paste. It looks like it will be retained for 1 week.

14

One item I forgot to mention. When I went in this last time, I used Cinnamon with software rendering, since that hadn’t been as problematic previously. This time it suffered from similar hanging and the screen winking off. So whatever the problem is, software rendering didn’t actually fix it.

15

What about getting all up to date? Is the kernel still 8 versions old? You should by now have 4.12.14-lp150.12.48-default. If not, there might be some fundamental installation issue(s) that need resolving before Cinnamon can be expected to work nicely.

That IceWM works suggests this is entirely a software issue. Cinnamon seems most likely, but I wouldn’t be surprised if LightDM isn’t at least part of the problem. To test that you can try starting an X session without involving the greeter. The cleaner way would be to append 3 to the linux line using the e key when the Grub menu appears. That will result in booting to multi-user instead of graphical mode. After logging in at the prompt, execute startx, and see what happens. You may be refused to run a session as normal user. You might need to login as root to test just long enough to see if the symptoms are gone. You can also try without appending 3 to the cmdline in grub by Ctrl-Alt-F3 after the greeter appears, logging in, then trying ‘startx – :1’. To try a session other than Cinnamon with startx might require this syntax: ‘WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/icewm startx’, substituting whatever session name is required for a chosen alternate to icewm or cinnamon.

Completely eliminating LightDM might be the or an answer, switching to GDM or SDDM or WDM or XDM via ‘update-alternatives --config default-displaymanager’. To select any but XDM might require the choice of other to use to be installed first with zypper or yast.

Your display and Radeon apparently both support a very very uncommon video mode, 2048x1152. Most displays jump from 1920x1080 to 1920x1200 or 2560x1440 and leave 2048x1152 out. It wouldn’t surprise me much if this mode is playing a role. It would be wonderful if you still have one of your Debians installed alongside so that comparisons of Xorg.0.log content could be made. Just as good would be saved Xorg.0.logs from any of those other distros that apparently worked fine, to see if they were using 2048x1152. Just as good if you can boot a live version of one of those distros. Regardless, I’d try configuring 15.0 to instead use 1920x1080 mode to see if it makes any difference to Cinnamon behavior.

15.1 is due to be released in about 6 weeks. It might be worth trying the beta. If it produces the same problem, you could file a bug report at bugzilla.opensuse.org that might get attention and possible fix before release. Very likely as old as HD3200 is, you’d have to provide more than nominal feedback. The devs likely won’t have IGP Radeon that old to try to reproduce or test with. At the least this would go on record prior to 15.1 release.

I don’t have room on my HD3470 box (89% of / is in use) to add Cinnamon unless I create a new installation from scratch, not a priority with other things (e.g., no working car) demanding my time ATM. Possibly I have room to add it without a fresh installation on my iMac with HD2400 (also rv610, same as your HD3200), but it’s using UEFI, which may make a difference in reproducibility. Also there I’m using TDM, so might have to replace it with LightDM or GDM to make Cinnamon even run.

16

mrmazda, thanks for all your help with this. Trying to patch everything was getting too far out of my proficiency. I took a fresh approach. I downloaded the latest Tumbleweed, assuming that would reflect the latest possible state of openSUSE. That way, there would be no questions about the kernel, what might be fixed, etc. Unfortunately, Cinnamon isn’t natively supported. But I ran some tests to see if at least the problems still existed. I tried all of the available DEs. Enlightenment was one, and I tried it just for the heck of it. That was the only one that exhibited the problems. All the other desktops worked in that respect. Whatever was the underlying problem appears to be fixed in Tumbleweed, which means that it is either fixed, or will be fixed in Leap. So the question posted here is overtaken by events and not worth solving. Unfortunately, I need Cinnamon for my application, so openSUSE doesn’t look viable at this point. I’ll keep my eye on it and investigate again if Cinnamon is added. Thanks, again, for all the time you put into helping on this. Is there a convention on this site for marking questions as a closed issue?

17

I’m not sure I understand what this means. I suppose its absence from

http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/Suse/YaST/151/yast2-sw-GUIpatterns-151b.gif

may cover it.

Can you tell what if anything is missing here?

http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/Suse/YaST/151/yast2-sw-cinnamonSearch-s151b.gif

This may be a sort of chicken & egg problem, not enough reporting of bugs or enough package maintainer volunteers to make sure it’s all there and works, and not enough people because it either doesn’t work right, or is too much work to get installed without a pattern to start from, or as the very popular distribution LinuxMint default, it makes the pool of people who even want to try it on openSUSE too small.

18

Yeah, there are patterns available for all of the major DEs except Cinnamon. The hundreds of component packages might be available in the repository (I didn’t look), but unless someone knows what they’re doing, it isn’t practical to build a DE from parts. I don’t particularly even like Cinnamon, but right now I need to use it. :slight_smile:

19

That being the case, maybe you only need whatever part of Cinnamon supports whatever is is you require that requires Cinnamon. Wouldn’t installing only cinnamon-session after one of the other desktop patterns, depending on that one package to pull in all its own requirements, be worth trying? That could be a step toward getting a well working Cinnamon pattern into openSUSE.

Another option is installing any of the regular GUI patterns, then installing a minimal distro that provides your magic requirement in a virtual machine.

20

mrmazda, I basically need a “standard”, out-of-the-box Cinnamon implementation that’s a ready-to-use workplace. I don’t have the proficiency to build my own or to troubleshoot problems beyond some basic stuff. I’ve picked up what I’ve needed to got by, but I’m basically a computer user. I need to get my work done without wasting a lot of time tinkering under the hood. I’ve mostly used KDE on Mint and Ubuntu.

Something I use heavily requires “auto-focus” between workspaces. This use to work on most DEs, but it recently stopped working on most DEs (I assume due to a change in one of the common components). Cinnamon is one of the few DEs on which that still works, and it is reasonably similar to KDE. I was using it on Mint, but Mint and Ubuntu have been very buggy lately. So I was looking for another major, stable distro with Cinnamon as at least a temporary replacement. I had previously tried Leap KDE, and thought it was pretty good. I had a Leap 15.0 DVD with Cinnamon, but it must have been older, and apparently Cinnamon has since been dropped. For now, I guess I’ll keep exploring and put up with Mint’s bugs.