Mint 18 + Oibaf PPA = Cinnamon looks broken

[Dukenukemx]

I installed Mint 18 on a test machine I have that's similar to my HTPC, and when I install Oibaf PPA I boot into Cinnamon but then the screen has this ghosting effect and some windows are corrupt or missing. The graphics card is a Radeon HD 5550. Anyone else experience this problem? I'll try Mate next to see if this is occurring.

[Pierre]

did you test All the Hardware - using the live environment ?
- before installing the new version.

[Dukenukemx]

What do you mean by Live Environment? The Cinnamon UI? I tested is as far as clicking on the start menu and using FireFox to google Oibaf PPA. I decided to try Mint 18 Mate, to see if this is a Cinnamon UI issue. That doesn't bold well for my other machines with Mint 17.3 Cinnamon. Upgrading them would likely create the same problem, and lots of people would be mad at me. This a test machine to see how Mint 18 goes. And I can't remove Oibaf PPA.

[jimallyn]

Live Environment is when you boot from the DVD or USB before the install. It's usually a good thing to make sure all your hardware works before you install.

[Hoser Rob]

I installed Mint 18 on a test machine I have that's similar to my HTPC, and when I install Oibaf PPA I boot into Cinnamon but then the screen has this ghosting effect and some windows are corrupt or missing. The graphics card is a Radeon HD 5550. Anyone else experience this problem? I'll try Mate next to see if this is occurring.

Hmmm ... this is the exact same post & user ID as on this post from the Oibaf support forum ...

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/l ... rs/page164

... and if you can't get an answer there you probably won't get much here either. I'm also surprised you've been a member there for over 5 years and don't know what a live environment is, but I guess that's OT.

All this (esp. that support forum) makes me want to suggest you uninstall all that oibaf crap, delete the ppa, use the default driver, and don't ever touch 3rd party drivers again.

[Dukenukemx]

Hmmm ... this is the exact same post & user ID as on this post from the Oibaf support forum ...

Very observant of you.

... and if you can't get an answer there you probably won't get much here either. I'm also surprised you've been a member there for over 5 years and don't know what a live environment is, but I guess that's OT.

I'm not familiar with the terminology. Live boot, Live environment what's the difference? About the same as a engine and a motor I suppose. But yea, I realize now he meant Live Boot. Which was a pointless question since it booted up fine from the installation. It's only bad once the PPA is installed. Hence this thread.

All this (esp. that support forum) makes me want to suggest you uninstall all that oibaf crap, delete the ppa, use the default driver, and don't ever touch 3rd party drivers again.

Thanks, I wish I could remove the PPA but PPA-Purge doesn't actually remove the files. I use Oibaf PPA to get the latest open source graphic drivers, unless you know of a better method? Whatever, not that I care about using Oibaf PPA, but that my Mint 17.3 machines have this PPA and I'm sure upgrading them to Mint 18 will break something.

I haven't gotten around to testing this PPA with Mate and see how things go. Almost certain it's the Cinnamon UI not playing nice, but Mate is a good test for this. Just means if I want to upgrade to Mint 18 then I would need to install Mate first. I would report a bug but I don't think anyone cares. I'll post back when I finally test Mate. I know I keep saying that.

[Dukenukemx]

Turns out, I'm right. Big shock. Installed Mint 18 Mate 64-bit along with Oibaf PPA and no problems. Something about Cinnamon not playing nice with Oibaf PPA's updated graphics driver. Installed Steam with very much difficulty, and started to install Borderlands 2.

Feel free to figure out what's wrong here, cause I'm going to install Mate on my 17.3 machines when the upgrade goes out. Cause that's how much faith I have in you guys. Now that I think about it, I better install XFCE as well.

[lehjr]

I found the same issue with Radeon HD 7450. The log shows a bunch of:

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[   39.966991] radeon 0000:01:00.0: evergreen_surface_check_linear_aligned:215 texture pitch 1680 invalid must be aligned with 64
[   39.967003] radeon 0000:01:00.0: evergreen_cs_track_validate_texture:830 texture invalid 0x1a3c3441 0x10000419 0x0a0a0000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x8002001a
[   39.967061] [drm:radeon_cs_ioctl [radeon]] *ERROR* Invalid command stream !

which is oddly followed by this:

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[   81.408568] gvfsd-network[2116]: segfault at 8 ip 0000000000403fa9 sp 00007ffd151b5230 error 4 in gvfsd-network[400000+7000]
[   81.408720] gvfsd-network[2114]: segfault at 8 ip 0000000000403fa9 sp 00007ffd5a0dd3c0 error 4 in gvfsd-network[400000+7000]

Looks like might be related to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94901 but that should have been fixed. The issue is definitely a driver issue. I tried updating everything but the video drivers, and it wasn't until I updated the video drivers that I had this issue. Instead of purging the whole PPA, I just reverted the drivers to the last working version:

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sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-ati=1:7.7.0-1 xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu=1.1.0-1 xserver-xorg-video-radeon=1:7.7.0-1 xserver-xorg-video-intel=2:2.99.917+git20160325-1ubuntu1 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau=1:1.0.12-1build2

It would probably be beneficial to file a bug report on this. I just don't have the time right now.

[Dukenukemx]

Thanks for the info lehjr. I'll avoid updating Oibaf PPA until it's fixed. I'll let him know about the fbcon pixmap pitch fix.

[lehjr]

According to the name, that fix should already be in there: 1:7.7.99+git1606280732.3be841~gd~x:

git1606280732 = date code (YYMMDDHHMM)
.3be841 = commit 3be841d0ae7d505cef325993205b12d15e98dba9

so it may need more patching.

[Hoser Rob]

Installing drivers from a ppa is a Hail Mary pass anyway. I've never used them and never will because I know enough not to unknowingly install Linux on hardware that isn't supported yet.

Installing from a ppa (or tarball etc) pretty much means by definition that it's unsupported and you can't expect it to work properly. Don't blame Cinnamon or Mint or expect that installing Mate will fix it. In fact installing multiple DEs is just another good way to break things.

[lehjr]

Installing drivers from a ppa is a Hail Mary pass anyway. I've never used them and never will because I know enough not to unknowingly install Linux on hardware that isn't supported yet.

Installing from a ppa (or tarball etc) pretty much means by definition that it's unsupported and you can't expect it to work properly. Don't blame Cinnamon or Mint or expect that installing Mate will fix it. In fact installing multiple DEs is just another good way to break things.

In this case it isn't hardware that isn't supported yet but rather hardware that's been supported for years. And it's also built from the freedesktop repo rather than some exotic build meaning these are changes that are coming from upstream sources. In fact, I just went back and built this from source and found the issue to be in the very next commit for xserver-xorg-video-ati from the drivers that ships with Mint, so it's something that WILL be in the next driver update. And installing multiple DE's has never been a problem if they are coded properly.

Edit: The issue actually emerges about 7 commits after the shipped version, specifically at 1181b9c582f10b6c523e4b2988e2ce87ecf3d367

Edit 2: After looking at the log, and looking at the commit, it looks as if the issue is DRI3 and likely the same underlying issue reported here, as that commit I mentioned above enables DRI3: https://github.com/linuxmint/Cinnamon/issues/5209

[lehjr]

After some digging and experimentation, it looks like EXA and XAA are broken, but not just with Cinnamon accoding to the logs. I did however get the latest OIbaf driver working by using "Glamor"
/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf

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Section "Device"
        Identifier  "radeon"
        Driver "radeon"
        Option "AccelMethod"           "Glamor" #valid options are XAA, EXA and Glamor. Default value varies per-GPU.
        #Option "AccelMethod"           "XAA" #valid options are XAA, EXA and Glamor. Default value varies per-GPU.
        #Option "AccelMethod"           "EXA" #valid options are XAA, EXA and Glamor. Default value varies per-GPU.
        Option "DRI3"                  "on" #enable DRI3 instead of the default DRI2-mode
EndSection

[Dukenukemx]

Thanks lehir, I'll give it a try later. I was wondering about DRI3 cause none of my Radeon HD 5000/6000 cards run fine with DRI3 in Mint 17.3.

[Dukenukemx]

Lehjr your conf seems to work just fine. Cinnamon seems to show no issues so far.

[lehjr]

Lehjr your conf seems to work just fine. Cinnamon seems to show no issues so far.

Do you see any difference in performance at all? I really can't tell. The bug has been "fixed" https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95475
See also: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... EXA-GLAMOR