815395 - B2G Desktop does not paint on dubiously accelerated ATI/AMD X

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics: Layers, defect)

Description

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

I am running a triple-headed X ATI setup (1920x1200 x 3, portrait) on Ubuntu 12.10 that used to paint happily until we went out-of-process.  Then it exhibited the 'only updates in response to input' phenomenon of bug 799768.  Around the time of the aurora cut-over things got much worse, and with the landing of bug 799768, things don't paint at all for me.  This happened both using Unity with Compiz is a non-accelerated fashion as well as with xfwm4 now with xfce.  While the graphics setup is a bit of a nightmare, both stable Firefox and Firefox nightly display without visual artifacts.

Currently when I start b2g desktop under XFCE (uncomposited, I believe) the window is either completely gray or it may have pieces of the window it occluded.  Dragging the window off-screen and back on again display classic MS windows nobody-is-painting-this-window circumstances.

Here is what Firefox's nightly shows for the graphics in about:support:

Graphics
  Adapter Description
  ATI Technologies Inc. -- ATI FirePro V4800 (FireGL) Graphics Adapter


  Device ID
  ATI FirePro V4800 (FireGL) Graphics Adapter

  Driver Version
  4.2.11903 Compatibility Profile Context FireGL

  GPU Accelerated Windows
  0/1 Basic

  Vendor ID
  ATI Technologies Inc.

  WebGL Renderer
  ATI Technologies Inc. -- ATI FirePro V4800 (FireGL) Graphics Adapter

  AzureCanvasBackend
  cairo

  AzureContentBackend
  none

  AzureFallbackCanvasBackend
  none


Please let me know if I should try and run things differently, petition MoCo IT to buy replacement nvidia cards, etc.  Thanks!

Comment 1

[Andrew Sutherland [:asuth] (he/him)]

This now appears to work for me on my dubious setup, and it works pretty well!  I do seem to get the FTU-is-all-white bug (which I believe is known and tracked elsewhere), and when the app switching card view animation zooms in/out there is a graphical effect that looks like a cross between xor'ing and solarization, but it's temporary.

Thanks, platform people!