1746708 - SW WR/KDE X11/dual Intel (blocklisted DDX driver)+Nvidia: Uncontrollable Flickering (Failure log: "Managed to allocate after flush.")

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics: WebRender, defect, P3)

Description

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Attachment: about:support

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:100.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/100.0

Steps to reproduce:

Use Nightly with lots of open windows and many tabs each. At the moment, 40 windows with 222 tabs; about 1/2 what I used to have -- I'm cutting down... :)

Actual results:

I've been getting flickering on Nightly at least since 95.0a1, maybe before. It occurs after watching video for a few hours. As I'm writing this, one Nightly window (no streaming on this one) started flickering like crazy (scrollbar item below). Most other Nightly windows are still OK.
Once it starts, the flickering can consist of one or more of the following:

• tab icon
• tab. Sometimes, the tab (not the window below it) flckers
• Bookmark this page "star" flickers
• parts of tab's viewing area
• scrollbar appears to be scrolling up/down around a spot at high speed; window contents move up/down in sync
• entire tab viewing area. Random size blocks, some from other app windows.
• random flickering across entire window's tabs
• multiple Nightly windows (rare)

The flickering is not on/off; it's random video segments (from other tabs/windows?) flashing in and out at high speed.
The flickering can be reduced/stopped temporarily by:

• window-shading the affected window -- this only helps for a few minutes, seconds, or often not at all.
• closing the affected window and re-opening via History helps for a longer period; but returns sooner.

On a video stream, it may appear as a short video segment looping very fast. However, audio continues without issue.
Longer running streams are most likely to trigger the problem. Doesn't matter if video is watched on page or full-screen.

I typically have dozens of Nightly windows open on most of 10 virtual desktops. Also, many other apps; many instances of: emacs, oocalc, oowriter, oodraw; two claws-mail instances, and one each: Telegram, Zoom.
Only Nightly has this flickering problem.

Operating System: Mageia 8 (updated at least weekly)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.76.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.15.4-server-1.mga8
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-4710MQ CPU @ 2.50GHz
Memory: 31.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® HD Graphics 4600

Expected results:

Should be more stable.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Widget: Gtk' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

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Attachment: simplescreenrecorder-2021-12-18_05.43.56.webm (video)

Video of the problem. I started/stopped the video several times, trying to capture different types of flickering. Note that drop-down menus don't flicker while the content does.
Not every comment below can be seen in this video...

• flickering changes when mouse exits/enters window
• mouse hovering over tabs affects their flickering
• out of all the FF windows open, only this one flickers. Still flickering on other display.
• tabs in other windows are starting to crash
• video from other apps appear: I had the entire recorded FF window over a black konsole; yet FF managed to display part of the gkrellm window which is behind the konsole window.
• clicking on menu items (Bookmarks in video) brings up the drop-downs which cover flickering
• audio is never affected
• closing the window and re-opening it via History>Recently Closed Windows restores the window which now does not flicker. However, flickering will resume some time later. This close/re-open is less effective each time, eventually requiring a restart of FF.

Sadly, this problem usually takes hours before it appears. Since I'm keeping FF quite busy by randomly using most of the many open tabs, I can't tell if that activity has an impact on the window that starts flickering. That window is most often streaming video from https://americasvoice.news in full screen on an external display.

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

In the above video capture, the Bookmarks drop-down appears to have video over it momentarily. This must be an artifact of the recording process, maybe from my starting/stopping the video several times. I never see the menus flickering.

Comment 4

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:jimm, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 5

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Attachment: Troubleshooting Information

Comment 6

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New machine; same old problem... just faster flicker when it starts.
Operating System: Mageia 9
KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.88.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.16.14-server-1.mga9 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700K (Dell XPS8950)
Memory: 62.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT

Comment 7

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug has a release status flag that shows some version of Firefox is affected, thus it will be considered confirmed.

Comment 8

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My task bar was flickering as though an app couldn't decide whether to post an icon. Shut down Nightly and flickering instantly stopped.

Operating System: Mageia 9
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.93.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.17.7-server-1.mga9 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700K
Memory: 62.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT

Comment 9

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You may be interested in the bug I just filed at https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30482 Flickering is not restricted to Firefox...

Comment 10

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After nearly 3 days, with both monitors on DP ports, system seems quite stable now. Beginning to look like the AMD video card doesn't handle HDMI very well... See also https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30482
Keeping fingers crossed...

Comment 11

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So far, so good... The initial report was from my Dell M6800 laptop. The issue was really bad on the new Dell XPS 8950; but switching one monitor from HDMI to DP still appears to have resolved the flickering for me... The other monitor was always on DP port; but was impacted too. Not using HDMI appears to have resolved flickering on both screens... Still too early to be 100% certain though.

Comment 12

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Argh!! The system flickering seems resolved; but the Firefox flickering is still there. While playing video streams, the flicker is one of:

• the entire window switches between a previous page and the current page with the video
• the video toggles back and forth between two video frames, back and forth.
  Audio is not affected.
  Restarting FF resolves the issue for a while; usually several days. Maybe I notice this more than others because I don't update Nightly on a regular basis; actually, when the flicker starts, I download the latest Nightly and run that until a problem occurs.

Comment 13

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104.0a1 (2022-07-07) (64-bit) Flickering is getting worse once it starts... Also, now takes less than 24 hours to kick in.

However, there are some interesting ways to affect the flickering. Most flickering occurs in windows that have been used for video, or are currently showing video. Just now, a window with streaming video started flickering; though the flickering was mostly bits of the video stream replaying what looks like a very short buffer (just a few milliseconds long).

• grabbing the window's title bar and moving the window (doesn't matter how much or how little) stops that flickering and moves on to another bit of the stream -- move the window, stream updates to current position, flickers; repeat. Strangely, audio is never affected.
• this time the video element was flickering; but at one point the video froze and everything else on the page around the video started flickering
• while the window is in this state, switching tabs requires selecting a tab, then moving the window to update it to the desired tab. Same with scrolling a page: scroll, move window...
• I normally have between 20 and 30 windows open, and only one window flickers; this time got an idea... opened a new window and moved (click+drag) each tab from the flickering window to the fresh window; even the tab with the video. Close the bad window and FF is stable again, for now...
  It appears that whatever the problem is, it stays with the window, not the tabs.

Comment 14

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More... After apparently stopping the flickering by moving tabs to a fresh window. Switched to yet another window with static pages. Tried to switch tabs... nothing... moved the window, got the desired tab. Actually, moving the mouse out of the window and back in gives the same result (I use focus follows mouse in case that's important). So now I have another window with similar symptoms. In addition, part of the page jumps left, right, left,... moving the mouse out of that window stops the horizontal dance -- funny!! :) the page is https://www.lively.com/phones/ with a caption that reads "Our easiest jitterbug phones ever." Again, moved all the tabs to a new window, and issue is cleared up. Now, I see that the "phones" tab repeatedly slides horizontally every couple of seconds. Maybe this appears to be video that triggers the flickering...?

Comment 15

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104.0a1 (2022-07-13) (64-bit)
When a window starts flickering, input is also affected. Whether input consists of:

• mouse click to select something (tab, menu, menu item, etc)
• mouse click in a text field
• keystrokes
  these events are queued and acted upon when the window title bar is selected/moved
  I usually have 20-40 windows open; the problem affects one window, not the rest.

Comment 16

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Attachment: journal_20220815.zip from less than an hour before fault

This problem appears to have escalated to system-wide level.
I've had two failures where the system needed hard reset to restore.
Will try to attach short video; screenshot not possible as system was dying...
Each time, I was away from the system; this time, just long enough to prepare food for my dogs.

Symptoms: video goes nuts. Audio continues for a couple minutes, then gets choppy as system becomes unstable.

Comment 17

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Attachment: flickering.mp4.avi

Sorry about the quality; my phone was the only handy device.

Comment 18

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Reported to KDE: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=458771

Comment 19

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Not sure what resolved this... kernel 6.0? System has been stable for nearly 3 weeks.