Adventures in fixing video issues (Arch/Manjaro)

odoe

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So I recently picked up a snazzy new 27" 1440P monitor to go with my T430s Manjaro machine. This is my main machine and everything ran great.

Then I did a recent kernel upgrade (only thing I can think would impact this) and began to notice some nasty tearing in my display. I could see it moving window, scrolling browser pages, even watching some videos. It had to be a recent software update (why I think kernel) as I would have noticed this before.

So disconnect monitor, reboot a few times, still happens on laptop monitor. So after some digging, I found this page.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics#Tips_and_tricks

I tried the 20-intel.conf with "TearFree" "true" setting first. Worked great, until I tried watching video in Chrome, then whole machine came to a crawl. had to force reboot and kept getting error that "System has no xclients file". Well shit, after some digging and deleting that conf file, I was able to get back in using mdm Window manager after exit from terminal and selecting XSessions as my default from the mdm.

So, to get to my tip and provide any other users out there some insight, so far the most stable conf that removed the tearing and where videos don't crash my system is the "AccelMethod" "uxa" one.

So yeah, if you are using Manjaro and have video issues, try that above link, if you get stuck in that xclients error, try various conf files (or delete it entirely) and exit, relog back in selecting XSessions and set it as default.

When shit goes wrong in Linux, shit goes "fuck you" wrong.

ps - I had to use my phone to search for solutions and the Manjaro forums require you login to view threads. What a pain to do on a phone, fuck those guys.
 
Well if you have only one computer to use, it's hardly their fault is it?

Arch is not for the faint of heart. I have Manjaro running also currently in my linux box but I haven't been able to get wine working correctly on it. Wine doesn't like pulseaudio and the alsa wrappers didn't seem to play nice for some reason. So I ripped the pulseaudio off, installed alsa instead.

Now I have another problem with wine not being able to access a library that exists in the same exact file path that it 'cant find it from'. Sigh.
 
I've been down to my phone before too. I've been playing around with video settings too. Attempting to figure out which one conserves battery life on my laptop the best. :)
 
I'm about to install something else OP, after a week of ManjaroBox on a Sandy Bridge HTPC

Code:
$ inxi -Gx
Graphics:  Card: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
           bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.15.1 driver: intel
        
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Desktop
           GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.2.1 Direct Rendering: Yes

Code:
$ pacman -Si xf86-video-intel
Repository     : extra
Name           : xf86-video-intel
Version        : 2.99.912-1
Description    : X.org Intel i810/i830/i915/945G/G965+ video drivers
Architecture   : x86_64
URL            : http://xorg.freedesktop.org/
Licenses       : custom
Groups         : xorg-drivers  xorg
Provides       : xf86-video-intel-uxa  xf86-video-intel-sna
Depends On     : intel-dri  libxvmc  pixman  xcb-util>=0.3.9  glamor-egl
Optional Deps  : libxrandr: for intel-virtual-output
                 libxinerama: for intel-virtual-output
                 libxcursor: for intel-virtual-output
                 libxtst: for intel-virtual-output
Conflicts With : xorg-server<1.15.0  X-ABI-VIDEODRV_VERSION<15
                 X-ABI-VIDEODRV_VERSION>=16  xf86-video-intel-sna
                 xf86-video-intel-uxa  xf86-video-i810  xf86-video-intel-legacy
Replaces       : xf86-video-intel-uxa  xf86-video-intel-sna
Download Size  : 627.11 KiB
Installed Size : 2096.00 KiB
Packager       : Laurent Carlier <[email protected]>
Build Date     : Tue 10 Jun 2014 12:55:00 AM AKDT
Validated By   : MD5 Sum  SHA256 Sum  Signature



You don't have to make the 20-intel.conf file that causes x11 start problems problems. The conf file is at /etc/X11/mhwd.d/intel.conf

For me, the uxa driver greatly reduces the tearing on the desktop, but produces constant midscreen tearing in XBMC video. The sna driver with TearFree makes clean video in XBMC, until it consumes all 8 gigs of RAM and starts swapping. Sna without TearFree has tearing in video and worse tearing on the desktop. This with and without compositing, something I have to turn off in the aforementioned mhwd.d conf, because Compton no longer starts at all.


Fortunately for me, Evolution has only been on this box for a few days, installed from a ManjaroBox 0.8.10 usb. I'm just glad I didn't have to install Arch to find this out... :D
 
Yeah, I still get issues after reboot where the external monitor won't come on until I fiddle with the display control and reboot. Bummer since I really like Arch/Manjaro, but I may give something like crunchbang a shot to see if that's a little more stable with video.
 
Yeah, I still get issues after reboot where the external monitor won't come on until I fiddle with the display control and reboot. Bummer since I really like Arch/Manjaro, but I may give something like crunchbang a shot to see if that's a little more stable with video.




#! is running really well for me on the same hardware.

I didn't want to file a bug against Manjaro because there were forum posts and chats with the kernel devs about the Intel video issues, so I waited through another update on the supposition they were aware of it and could do anything about it downstream of them. No joy.

I should have noticed that the Manjaro forum posts were marked [SOLVED], and the solution was to rollback to a previous version from Pacman package cache. That wasn't a good option for me, since the only thing to rollback to in the pkg cache was the x11 and driver packages from the original .iso image, which would have ripped out lots and lots of other upgrades along wth the video driver.

It just made more sense to try Crunchbang, which solved the problem and turned out to be more usable and less buggy from the start, while still being very light and OpenBox.

I might check out Manjaro on the same metal in a few months, but I already have it in VBox, where it runs great...
 
have you tried updating the kernel in Manjaro? In Manajaro 0.8.10 they added a super easy way to do this. Manjaro i believe ships with kernel 3.12. The lastest linux kernel stable is 3.15.6. Maybe they have added some improvements?
 
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