XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

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jonshouse

XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by jonshouse »

The desktop display settings seem to have several bugs.

Starting evolution or "xfce4-display-settings" causes the primary display to blank for many seconds.

Not sure how to file this as a bug report or what packages would be causing this weirdness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qNXtDW ... e=youtu.be
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mint4all
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Re: XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by mint4all »

Greetings! Your vid was quite informative. From the looks of it, you're using a rather large flatpanel as your primary display. Without knowing more about your cpu (cores & memory) and gpu (integrated vs. dedicated) it is difficult to guess what might be the cause of your problem. If it were up to me, i'd boot up from a live dvd/usb and try to duplicate the problem (screen delay), 1st with the base system image, then 2nd after installing evolution.

Then if the base (read: clean) system hickups, too, we have some issues that s/b resolved first ... For now, please provide us with some info about your system's setup. To save you some time, you may paste the following command ...
inxi -Fxz
into a Terminal window, run the command ("Enter"), then cut/paste the command's output into your next reply. Thanks!

PS: for those mint-users interested in the Evolution app, a good write-up is available @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_(software) (imho).
jonshouse

Re: XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by jonshouse »

This PC is a little annoying, I can't seem to get the boot menu up within the BIOS, in the end I disconnected the SSD to force it to boot from the DVD.

The live CD image is this one:
jon-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-SFF Desktop # md5sum /linuxmint-18.3-xfce-64bit.iso
168c208ded9d85a312761ff09d190d6b /disks/vol1/linuxmint-18.3-xfce-64bit.iso

Live CD does not come with evolution, I did apt-get install it, starting it did not blank the display,I cant be sure if it would not blank the display without fully configuring it, I don't have time for that at the moment.

I seem to remember as I went through cycles of "apt-get upgrade" "apt-get update" the problem showed up at some point.

Currently I am at this version.....
jon-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-SFF Desktop # evolution --version
evolution 3.18.5.2

After initial boot evolution always blanks the large display when started, but not when closed and re-started, I assume something left resident generates the iniitial event.

Settings/Display (xfce4-display-settings) also blanks the large monitor for a number of seconds on both the live CD and current install.

Booting from the live CD gave me chance to show another bug, initially settings/display shows only one monitor, even though two are present and mirrored, Toggling "mirror" displays wakes it to the presence of multiple monitors. I've seen this bug referenced elsewhere, it is long standing ... hmmm ......

What is the correct place to file these bugs?

Excuse the poor camera work, camera+mouse is little clunky for me :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmUerhL ... e=youtu.be

Thanks,

on-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-SFF Desktop # inxi -Fxz
System: Host: jon-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-SFF Kernel: 4.10.0-38-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 (Gtk 2.24.28) Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia
Machine: System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF
Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 3397
Bios: Hewlett-Packard v: K01 v02.05 date: 05/07/2012
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-3770 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 27139
clock speeds: max: 3900 MHz 1: 2982 MHz 2: 3666 MHz 3: 3708 MHz
4: 3518 MHz 5: 3650 MHz 6: 3793 MHz 7: 3040 MHz 8: 3476 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
bus-ID: 00:02.0
Display Server: X.org 1.18.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
tty size: 80x24 Advanced Data: N/A for root
Audio: Card-1 Intel 7 Series/C210 Series Family High Definition Audio Controller
driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
Card-2 Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920
driver: USB Audio usb-ID: 003-002
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.0-38-generic
Network: Card: Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: f080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 320.9GB (19.6% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: KINGSTON_SV300S3 size: 240.1GB temp: 28C
ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: USB_CARD_READER size: 16.8GB temp: 0C
ID-3: USB /dev/sdc model: Camcorder size: 64.1GB temp: 0C
ID-4: USB /dev/sdd model: Camcorder size: 0.0GB temp: 0C
Partition: ID-1: / size: 212G used: 50G (25%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
ID-2: swap-1 size: 8.46GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda3
RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 29.8C mobo: 27.8C
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 266 Uptime: 13 min Memory: 1386.7/7856.5MB
Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.2.35
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mint4all
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Re: XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by mint4all »

Thanks for the system info. My take is that your difficulties have to do with your 6 y.o. SFF system's integrated graphics. To firm up on my theory, please copy/paste the following command
xrandr
into a terminal window, press "Enter", then copy/paste that command's output into your next reply. That should show us what your GPU's optimum resolution setting is vs. what you're actually using.

Aside from that, imho, evolution's start-up delay has to do with typical large-app caching of its libraries/code (to improve subsequent response time) which you may or may not be able to tweak, depending on what options the app's start-up command/script provides you with. We'll check that out later...
jonshouse

Re: XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by jonshouse »

Aside from that, imho, evolution's start-up delay has to do with typical large-app caching of its libraries/code (to improve subsequent response time) which you may or may not be able to tweak, depending on what options the app's start-up command/script provides you with. We'll check that out later...
I suspect the load time of evolution it is a couple of seconds max, however why it should cause the monitor to blank (and remain blank much longer than the load time) I have no idea.

I suspect it is not a bandwidth or contention problem if that is what you are thinking,I kick the CPU and memory very hard with some of my workloads, they do not blank the display. No other workload that saturates I/O, uses large amounts of RAM and multiple CPU cores has any effect on the display.

I personally suspect some kind of DBUS, X11 or power management event is a more likely culprit, it would be interesting to find out.
Mint 17, on the exact same hardware, did not have the display blank on evolution loading.

You did not reply with the best place to file the bug with xfce4-display-settings ?

Thanks.
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 4608 x 2160, maximum 32767 x 32767
DP1 connected primary 3840x2160+768+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 878mm x 485mm
3840x2160 30.00* 29.98 24.00
2560x1440 59.95
2048x1080 59.99
1920x1080 60.00 60.00 50.00 59.94
1920x1080i 60.00 50.00 59.94
1680x1050 59.95
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1440x900 74.98 59.89
1280x960 60.00
1280x720 60.00 50.00 59.94
1024x768 75.03 60.00
800x600 75.00 60.32
720x576 50.00
720x480 60.00 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00 59.94
720x400 70.08
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA1 connected 768x1360+0+800 right (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 406mm x 229mm
1360x768 60.02*+
1024x768 75.03 60.00
832x624 74.55
800x600 75.00 60.32
640x480 75.00 59.94
720x400 70.08
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
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mint4all
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Re: XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by mint4all »

Fwiw, XFCE.org maintains its own buglist @ https://bugzilla.xfce.org/ ...

I did a prelim search on issues re. XFWM4 and there are a lot of open/new bugs reported in the 2016-2018 timeframe. Another search using startpage.com turned up high-res problems with your aging GPU (v2; intel's product sheets indicate that your chipset's rev. to v3 & v4 incoporated major improvements). One post i found mentioned that above 2560x1440 resolution, the rendering & compositing gets very unreliable in v2 of that chipset. Perhaps there's a firmware upgrade available from intel?

Some people had success with back-leveling the kernel to pre-LM18.3 versions; unfortunately, i'm not experienced in that area :( ... Anyway, if it were my system, i'd opt to install a dual-port high-end graphics card and bypass the mobo's graphics chipset.
jonshouse

Re: XFCE - loading evolution blanks monitor for many seconds!

Post by jonshouse »

One post i found mentioned that above 2560x1440 resolution, the rendering & compositing gets very unreliable in v2 of that chipset
It isn't rendering or compositing anything at all during the blank period (esp as compositing is turned off my install).
I disagree with your entire premise, sorry.
Anyway, if it were my system, i'd opt to install a dual-port high-end graphics card and bypass the mobo's graphics chipset.
Errr - no ! That is what I came from. As I rarely use 3D I wanted to get away from noisy over the top graphics cards, hence the move to a nice quiet SFF HP

I will see if I can find the cause using bucket loads of strace and dbus monitoring if I get some free time.

Thanks for the URL for bug reports.
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