Subject: EXA causes arifacts

From: Ulrich Eckhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:14:33 +0100

Package: xserver-xorg
Version: 1:7.5+2

I have artifacts with colors being off and sometimes areas being filled with 
black/white noise. I didn't capture the black/white noise, since it doesn't 
happen so often. The colors being off happens regularly, though the effect is 
not always the same.

System setup:
 * PowerPC G4 (Mac Mini)
 * ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200] (rev 01)
 * Debian testing

Notes:
 * The artifacts are not always the same and they change even within one 
session.
 * I'm running at 24 BPP. I tried using 16BPP, and I think that it doesn't 
happen there. However, it's hard to tell since 16BPP currently exhibits other 
problems, the whole screen has a dark greenish tint (see bugs #565313 and 
#567616).
 * The pictures show kmail and I first saw the problem in konqueror, both 
KDE/Qt applications, so I initially suspected that KDE/Qt might be the 
culprit. Further, iceweasel seemed to show no such misbehavior at all. 
However, I also saw colors off in the window decoration painted by fluxbox, so 
KDE/Qt are probably just victims, too.
 * In the pictures of the pop-up, there are the frames of the buttons which 
are off. Further, notice the yellowish areas near the bottom, which doesn't 
belong there.
 * In the pictures with the menu, it's the colors of the icons that are off 
(not always though, compare the two "Send Queued .." ones). Further, the 
separator lines and the '>' arrows leading to further submenus are off.
 * Looking at the log files, I see that both versions have the error "Static 
buffer allocation failed.  Disabling DRI. At least 34020 kB of video memory 
needed at this resolution and depth.". Maybe it's just that EXA really depends 
on this but fails to check it properly?

BTW: Anyone have an idea how I could fix that DRI doesn't work? I'd switch 
back to 16BPP but then I would again get hit by other current breakage... :(

Cheers!

Uli

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From: "Brice.Goglin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 10:12:23 +0200

>  * ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200] (rev 01)

Assuming this is the problem you referred to at the end of
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=587999#66
could you give an update to the status of this exact bug report too?

Brice

---

From: Ulrich Eckhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:49:05 +0200

On Sunday 11 July 2010 10:12:23 Brice.Goglin wrote:
> > I have artifacts with colors being off and sometimes areas being filled
> > with black/white noise. 
[...]
> could you give an update to the status of this exact bug report too?

No, the artifacts that prompted me to file this bug were different. However, 
I'll give EXA another try with the new driver and report the current state.

Uli