792480 - Gfx driver block request: AMD driver 8.982.0.0

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Toolkit :: Blocklist Policy Requests, defect)

Description

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Vendor: 0x1002
Feature: DIRECT2D
Driver versions: 8.982.0.0
OS: ALL

We're seeing huge numbers of crashes with the ATI/AMD driver version 8.982.0.0, so we should block it from using Direct2D using the downloaded graphics blocklist.

Comment 1

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Direct2D exists only on Vista and above.
In addition to the ATI vendor ID, the AMD vendor ID is 0x1022

Comment 2

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

(In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #1)
> Direct2D exists only on Vista and above.
> In addition to the ATI vendor ID, the AMD vendor ID is 0x1022

Blocking it everywhere is harmless though, and prevents us from having to add 4 entries instead of 2.

Comment 3

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

I staged both blocks using the data provided (id: 131 for ATI and 133 for AMG).

Comment 4

[u279076]

Unfortunately, I don't have access to any AMD hardware locally.

Marcia or Juan, could one of you take ownership of this and test it in the lab?

Comment 5

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Er, AMD's vendor id is 0x1004, isn't it?

Comment 6

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

(In reply to Joe Drew (:JOEDREW! \o/) from comment #5)
> Er, AMD's vendor id is 0x1004, isn't it?

No, I'm wrong. Ignore me.

Comment 7

[juan becerra [:juanb]]

Attachment: about:support information and blocklist entry

I checked the staged blocklist and forced a blocklist ping. The entry is added, but the information in about:support says Direct2D is still enabled.

Does the blocklist entry need an OS to be specified? See the attachment.

Comment 8

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Jorge, can you explicitly set the OS to "ALL" for those blocklist entries?

Comment 9

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

OH! And you need to specify the comparator as EQUAL.

Comment 10

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Done. Does 'Feature Status' need to be set to anything?

Comment 11

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Oh crap, yes. BLOCKED_DRIVER_VERSION.

Comment 12

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Also done :)

Comment 13

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Ok, Juan, should be ready for testing again :)

Comment 14

[juan becerra [:juanb]]

Attachment: Direct2D still shows as enabled in about:support

Tried it again, but the about:suppport information still says "Direct2D Enabled: true."

The blocklist entry is updated with the information added, but the only thing that I see different from other similar blocklist entries is that it is missing a "device" parameter. Other than that, I don't know why it's about:support is still showing Direct2D as enabled.

Comment 15

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Ugh ugh ugh. I am so bad at this.

Can you change the OS to the literal "All" instead of "ALL"? It's case-sensitive because I am new at this apparently.

I've tested a blocklist xml file with this change and it worked for me (while spoofing vendor and driver).

Comment 16

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Updated.

Comment 17

[juan becerra [:juanb]]

It's working now on staging. The blocklist is updated, and the information in about:support now says D2D is blocked for this driver version.

Comment 18

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Thanks for sticking with me, Jorge and Juan. Let's push this live and see what it does to crash stats.

Comment 19

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

The blocks are now live, ids 144 and 146.

Comment 20

[Scoobidiver (away)]

I've updated https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers#Downloaded_blacklist accordingly.

Comment 21

[juan becerra [:juanb]]

I've verified this in production.

Comment 22

[James May [:fowl2]]

So all acceleration for users with AMD/ATI graphics on Windows is now disabled? That seems a little drastic, doesn't it?

Comment 23

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to James May [:fowl] from comment #22)
> That seems a little drastic, doesn't it?
Do you have a better solution because crashes were occurring behind the empty crash signature with no way to correlate to specific GPUs or user's configurations?
AMD releases a new driver version every two months, you just need to wait Catalyst 12.9.

Comment 24

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

Actually, it's only users with Catalyst 12.8. Earlier or later versions aren't blocked.

Comment 25

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Catalyst 12.9 Beta is released and fixes some memory corruptions with Firefox: http://support.amd.com/de/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst129betadriver.aspx

Comment 26

[Dennis Jakobsen]

@Scoobidiver, thx. As a technical user i would have loved to be notified of this driver block.

Comment 27

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to Dennis Jakobsen from comment #26)
> @Scoobidiver, thx. As a technical user i would have loved to be notified of
> this driver block.
Notifying such a thing would worry more people that don't even know HW acceleration than reassure a few technical users such as you. You can add the link in comment 20 and also https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/blocked/ to your RSS.

Comment 28

[Dennis Jakobsen]

ok, i realize the implications of such a notification.

That RSS feed does not include a single ATI/Amd Driver entry, so that's hardly useful.

The beta driver 9.1.0.0 is also blocked and nowhere to be found on the block list
I installed the driver you linked and it seems to use the Win8 driver version scheme and is also blocked, which is not indicated on the Block List: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Blocklisting/Blocked_Graphics_Drivers

Win7 x64 - AMD Radeon 7850
Driver version: 9.1.0.0

I can't find a block request for this driver in bugzilla.

Comment 29

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to Dennis Jakobsen from comment #28)
> The beta driver 9.1.0.0 is also blocked
It's not intentionally blocked. Please file a new bug in the Core - Graphics component. Provide the Graphics section of your about:support in that bug.

Comment 30

[ferongr]

Attachment: Graphics section of about:support after installation of 12.9 beta Catalyst package.

I just installed the 12.9 beta Catalyst package and cannot reproduce Dennis' issue.

Comment 31

[Dennis Jakobsen]

I think it comes down to details like:

1. did you uninstall the old driver first?
2. did you reboot after install?
3. both

Windows keeps older driver installs, so if you install a new one on top.. and uninstall it again, you'll be back where you started.

If Firefox looks in the registry, maybe the old version lingers on case 1 or 2 ?

Anyway, i uninstalled all drivers i could and did a fresh install of 9.1.0.0, rebooted and i'm not seeing any blocked drivers anymore.

Comment 32

[Joe Drew (not getting mail)]

I know what the problem was: Firefox doesn't immediately refresh what driver is installed for the purposes of blocking. It re-evalutes its decision daily when downloading the driver blocklist. Therefore, you might need to wait up to a day for the driver blacklisting decision to be re-evaluated.