Closed Bug 1870457 Opened 2 years ago Closed 1 years ago

Characters missing or incorrectly placed

Categories

(Core :: Graphics: WebRender, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Graphics: WebRender
Version:
Firefox 120
Platform:
Desktop
All
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: h9l, Unassigned)

References

Details

Attachments

(7 files, 1 obsolete file)

While browsing https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/get-started
127.48 KB, image/png
Details
Letters positioned in the wrong placed
157.14 KB, image/png
Details
Letters missing in Web Developer Tools console view
5.38 KB, image/png
Details
Letters missing in Advanced Preferences tab title
3.51 KB, image/png
Details
Letters missing in tab title
3.33 KB, image/png
Details
about_support.json
50.08 KB, application/json
Details
ubuntu-ff-about_support.json
67.72 KB, application/json
Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:120.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/120.0

Steps to reproduce:

My machine is using AMD Ryzen 7700 iGPU on Windows 11 with all latest updates and AMD drivers 23.12.1.

  1. Install Firefox 120.0.1 and run it
  2. Enter a URL and start browsing

Actual results:

Some letters are missing or are incorrectly placed while browsing. It can also happen while typing in input fields and text areas (yes, it's also happening while I'm writing this). Eventually it fixed itself after some seconds. It happens for all areas which contain text in Firefox. I observed it on websites, active and inactive tabs, bookmarks toolbar, web developer tools console view.

Expected results:

No letters are missing and all letters are in the correct position.

Attached image Letters missing in tab title (obsolete) —

Issue seems to be related to a bad combination of drivers. I used the AMD Cleanup Utility to uninstall all AMD related drivers. Then I used the AMD Software Adrenaline Edition 23.12.1 Minimal Setup installer. This time I chose "Minimal" installation package, before I chose "Drivers only" installation package which resulted in the described errors.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
Status: RESOLVED → UNCONFIRMED
OS: Unspecified → Windows 11
Hardware: Unspecified → Desktop
Resolution: INVALID → ---

Unfortunately, I was able to reproduce it again. I happens much fewer than before, but it still happens sporadically. High GPU usage doesn't have any effect on it. I was able to reproduce it with very low load, but wasn't able to reproduce it with very high load.

Attachment #9369061 - Attachment is obsolete: true
OS: Windows 11 → All

I can confirm it happens also on Ubuntu 22.03 with the same version of Firefox.

I created a Firefox Profile. The issue appears at ~ 22.31s and disappears at ~22.7s (see text of included screenshots). The website I was browsing is https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/fix-problems with 300% zoom.

Profile is available here: https://share.firefox.dev/3TuDou0

Flags: needinfo?(bhood)

Dropping this into WR, but asking Jonathan to have a look

Component: Graphics → Graphics: WebRender
Flags: needinfo?(bhood) → needinfo?(jfkthame)
Summary: Letters missing or incorrectly placed → Characters missing or incorrectly placed

This feels to me like it must be some fairly low-level graphics issue, maybe related to caching of the rasterized glyphs? I would have been inclined to wonder about a driver-level bug, but the fact that the user reports it happening on Ubuntu as well as Windows perhaps makes it more likely to be at the webrender level.

From the comments, it doesn't seem to be related to particularly heavy use (which we might suspect of leading to some kind of resource exhaustion); maybe something like a race condition in maintaining rasterized-glyph caches, resulting in occasionally-broken cache entries? But I'm really just guessing here.

Flags: needinfo?(jfkthame)

I unsuccessfully tried to reproduce it under heavy load while playing two 4k videos in Firefox, running https://browserbench.org/MotionMark1.2/ and opening like 20 tabs with various websites.

Glenn, can you throw a Severity on this when you get a chance?

Flags: needinfo?(gwatson)

It seems surprising that it happens on both windows and ubuntu. The drivers possibly (?) share some code, but maybe that points to something else going on. I'll mark it as S2 for now, in case it's affecting other users on this hardware. If we determine it is a software / hardware issue specific to only this machine, we will probably drop it to S3.

h9l, could you go to about:config, change gfx.webrender.software to true, restart the browser and let us know if it's still occurring? I expect that will work around the issue, as it means we won't be using the GPU for rasterizing those glyphs (not a long term solution, as it's slower, but would be good to know).

Severity: -- → S2
Flags: needinfo?(gwatson) → needinfo?(hwi)

Could you also share the output of about:support here, and let us know if you have anything listed in about:crashes ?

Meanwhile I disabled "Use recommended performance settings" and "Use hardware acceleration when available" under General -> Performance as a workaround. I couldn't reproduce it anymore with these settings disabled.

I'll add the output of about:config to the attachments.

I submitted all crash reports:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/d264e792-eca3-4662-aba8-9c1ea0231219
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/4a8ea26f-08d7-4e63-8e69-9431b0231219
https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/56554a1e-683f-4d1d-bcf7-24ce90231219

Flags: needinfo?(hwi)
Attached file about_support.json —

OK, disabling that hardware acceleration preference probably does the same thing, as it looks like your about:support is using software-webrender.

Interestingly, each of those three crashes comes from inside the AMD GPU driver, when trying to do something with a video codec. If it's correlated to that, it's possible we get some kind of GPU reset and we're not handling the glyph atlases being re-uploaded, or something like that (could also be driver memory corruption). Do you recall if it only happens on pages with video at all?

Sotaro, are there any preferences the reporter could disable to work around that driver crash in video, to see if that's related at all?

Flags: needinfo?(hwi)
Flags: needinfo?(sotaro.ikeda.g)

The following pref change could disable hardware video decoding.

-[1] pref media.hardware-video-decoding.enabled = false from about:config
-[2] Restart Firefox

Flags: needinfo?(sotaro.ikeda.g)

(In reply to Glenn Watson [:gw] from comment #18)

OK, disabling that hardware acceleration preference probably does the same thing, as it looks like your about:support is using software-webrender.

Interestingly, each of those three crashes comes from inside the AMD GPU driver, when trying to do something with a video codec. If it's correlated to that, it's possible we get some kind of GPU reset and we're not handling the glyph atlases being re-uploaded, or something like that (could also be driver memory corruption). Do you recall if it only happens on pages with video at all?

Sotaro, are there any preferences the reporter could disable to work around that driver crash in video, to see if that's related at all?

I doubt the crashes are not really connected to the issue I submitted. As you can see in comment #9 it happened while only opening one tab browsing https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/fix-problems.

Flags: needinfo?(hwi)

I recorded some profiles on Ubuntu. There have been no crash reports listed in about:crashes. I'll also attach the output of about:support.

https://share.firefox.dev/479qAfN (range where it happens)
https://share.firefox.dev/3NzIP7d (range where it happens)
https://share.firefox.dev/3GPl7zN (here something else happens, not sure if related)

See Also: → 1879421
See Also: → 1879424
Depends on: 1879425
See Also: → 1879425

Also having this exact issue, text is corrupt and letters will come and go.
7800x3d igpu.
Chrome and Edge do not have any issues.
Websites, menu, settings all have corrupt text.
Running Firefox in safe mode seems to fix it (Shift click to start Firefox). Obviously, running in safe mode all the time isn't ideal.
Drivers from Windows Update or AMD directly doesn't seem to make a difference with the bug.

I no longer think it is a Firefox bug. I'm having similar rendering issues with VSCode and Word now.

See Also: → 1880074

Reinstalled Windows 11. Firefox doesn't have the text corruption until the AMD driver is installed by Windows Update. Latest Radeon gpu drivers directly from AMD or Asus don't solve the issue. Seems more like a severe GPU driver issue now.

(In reply to Sunain.pm from comment #26)

Reinstalled Windows 11. Firefox doesn't have the text corruption until the AMD driver is installed by Windows Update. Latest Radeon gpu drivers directly from AMD or Asus don't solve the issue. Seems more like a severe GPU driver issue now.

How likely do you think that this is a hardware issue? I assume there just isn't hardware acceleration available if you do not install the drivers. The drivers could have just made hardware acceleration available and exposed the issue.

Since this is present on both Linux and Windows, which I assume have different drivers, and that this problem is not seemingly very widespread despite the chips being out for over a year, I think there is a chance our chips may be defective.

(In reply to 1over137 from comment #27)

(In reply to Sunain.pm from comment #26)

Reinstalled Windows 11. Firefox doesn't have the text corruption until the AMD driver is installed by Windows Update. Latest Radeon gpu drivers directly from AMD or Asus don't solve the issue. Seems more like a severe GPU driver issue now.

How likely do you think that this is a hardware issue? I assume there just isn't hardware acceleration available if you do not install the drivers. The drivers could have just made hardware acceleration available and exposed the issue.

I noticed the same and think hardware acceleration is simply not available without drivers being installed.

(In reply to 1over137 from comment #28)

Since this is present on both Linux and Windows, which I assume have different drivers, and that this problem is not seemingly very widespread despite the chips being out for over a year, I think there is a chance our chips may be defective.

After several rounds of troubleshooting with the AMD support, they said that it seems to be a hardware issue and asked me to submit a warranty claim request.

Based on the last few comments, we'll close this. If relevant information changes, please reopen.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 2 years ago → 1 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
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