Twitter have launched a new design (see links).
For some reason, opening an image within Twitter on my second display really pisses my graphics driver off, and that screen might flash a couple of times, but ultimately goes black and idle.
When that happens, to recover it I need to hit Ctrl-W to close whatever tab I'd just opened.
Repro steps are
- Open Twitter in Chrome/Chromium
- Ensure Twitter's new interface is active
- Load a tweet containing and image (e.g.
https://twitter.com/GeorgianLords/status/1151065251896528896 or
https://twitter.com/kandylul/status/1151130951654637568)
- Click on the image to open Twitter's modal
- Issue triggers
- Ctrl+W to close the tab
- Screen should recover
- Go back to the tweet
- Right click image -
Open in New Tab
- Issue does not occur
Have been entirely unable to repro in Firefox, or with Twitter's old interface.
Can see the display twitching in
syslog
Jul 16 15:05:03 milleniumfalcon org.kde.KScreen[1810]: kscreen: Primary output changed from KScreen::Output(Id: 606 , Name: "DP-3" ) ( "DP-3" ) to KScreen::Output(Id: 606 , Name: "DP-3" ) ( "DP-3" )
Jul 16 15:05:03 milleniumfalcon org.kde.KScreen[1810]: message repeated 7 times: [ kscreen: Primary output changed from KScreen::Output(Id: 606 , Name: "DP-3" ) ( "DP-3" ) to KScreen::Output(Id: 606 , Name: "DP-3" ) ( "DP-3" )]
Don't see anything in
dmesg or anywhere else either.
Chromium's version string is:
Version 71.0.3578.98 (Official Build) Built on Ubuntu , running on Ubuntu 16.04 (64-bit)
Other relevant info:
root@milleniumfalcon:~# lspci | grep VGA
0f:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [NVS 300] (rev a2)
Tailing
~/.xsession-errors whilst repro-ing yields no output, nothing going into
Xorg.0.log or similar locations either
--------
Update:
I'm going to rephrase the problem so that I've half a chance of finding it again when searching later:
When viewing specific content in a browser (Firefox/Chromium/Chrome) in Kubuntu 16.04 (i.e. running KDE), if that content is on the secondary display that display will go blank/black until the tab containing that content is closed.
The monitor is still active (it's not gone into sleep mode, or complaining of no input - it's just not receiving/displaying any graphics).
The screen may flash between active and black a couple of times, but ultimately will fall inactive. It's necessary to either press Ctrl-W to close the relevant tab, or to blindly click off the tab. Switching between KDE workspaces will recover the screen until you switch back to whichever one contains the tab with the content.
It's not (yet) clear what the requirements are for the content to trigger this.
It's been observed when clicking in to view images on Twitter (using their modal to display), if instead the image is right clicked and
View Image in New Tab the issue does not occur. It's also been observed on MoneySupermarket.co.uk - when scrolling down they push a banner into view to entice you to join the mailing list (see attachments for screenshot), this banner (or something about it) seems to repro the issue.
Nothing appears to be being logged to any system logs, the browser console or any other location.
Activity
2019-07-16 15:16:34
root@milleniumfalcon:~# nvidia-smi Tue Jul 16 15:16:12 2019 +------------------------------------------------------+ | NVIDIA-SMI 340.104 Driver Version: 340.104 | |-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ | GPU Name Persistence-M| Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC | | Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap| Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. | |===============================+======================+======================| | 0 NVS 300 Off | 0000:0F:00.0 N/A | N/A | | N/A 68C P8 N/A / N/A | 470MiB / 511MiB | N/A Default | +-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Compute processes: GPU Memory | | GPU PID Process name Usage | |=============================================================================| | 0 Not Supported | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+2019-07-16 15:17:27
2019-07-16 15:17:30
2019-07-16 15:20:11
This Nvidia driver isn't exactly flawless anyway, it seems to leak memory over time.
I would be curious to know though, just what Twitter have their workers doing to trigger the issue. It's not the image itself as viewing directly doesn't repro the issue, and it won't repro using their old interface.
2019-07-16 15:24:26
2019-07-16 15:24:27
2019-07-16 15:27:04
2019-07-16 15:27:05
2019-07-16 15:36:17
I wanted to launch a completely new chromium instance so I could push logging to
Can't repro in that new instance. So is it that something else needs to be open, only happens after a while (I do tend to leave my browser open) or is it perhaps an interaction with an extension? Simply opening lots of tabs wasn't enough to repro.
Will have to look at this more later
2019-07-16 15:53:20
In the meantime, I've updated to the latest version in the repos
Will have to wait and see whether this starts occurring again at some point.
2019-07-17 14:20:44
Big difference here, though, it happened in Firefox.
It's fine when you first hit the page, but, as you scroll down they push up a banner at the bottom to get you to sign up to their mailing list.
So we've learned 3 things so far:
- As much as I'd love to blame Twitter's crap new interface, it's a trigger rather than a cause
- It can happen in Firefox
- It doesn't happen if you reduce the browser window from full screen
2019-07-17 14:20:44
2019-07-17 14:28:36
There's a bug logged against KScreen too - https://kde-bugs-dist.kde.narkive.com/0U11bn71/kscreen-bug-355928-new-kscreen-reports-change-of-primary-screen-without-apparent-reason - no real resolution there (other than uninstall kscreen). There seem to be people not using Nvidia and still reporting it too, so maybe it isn't Nvidia.
That said, they're all complaining of excessive log noise rather than issues with the display itself, so maybe the line's appearance is coincidental. Will verify that it actually gets logged when the screen flaps
2019-07-17 14:35:16
2019-07-17 15:04:32
Nothing hitting
In some ways that's worse though, my monitor is going blank and nothing's getting logged anywhere...
Sat and watched the GPU's status in the Nvidia app while repro-ing. I don't see any spike in GPU memory usage, or GPU utilisation when it happens.
2019-07-17 15:13:22
I mean, to some extent, this is probably what I deserve for having put KDE on this machine. I use XFCE everywhere else...
2019-07-18 13:32:34
I now have a Firefox window that won't repaint while it's in focus. So, if I click a tab, the contents of the window will not change until I click off onto some other application (or roll over to another KDE workspace). The title of the window will change though and if I start typing in the address bar, the auto-suggestions will drop down, but the contents of the address bar don't visibly change. So under the hood the application is responding to clicks etc, it's just that the graphical output is... stuck
Similarly, staying on the same tab, if I use the scroll wheel (or try to drag a scroll bar), nothing will change until I change focus.
The KDE panel in that workspace is also flickering slightly, with a bright blue box around some of the windows in the taskbar.
The description here probably probably doesn't quite make clear what I'm seeing, so will try and capture a video.
As before, when reproing, nothing is hitting the logs
Edit: video is here - https://videos.bentasker.co.uk/Player.html?url=2019/07/MISC_33_KDE_window_repaint_issue/MISC_33_KDE_window_repaint_issue_master.m3u8
That was taken after closing a bunch of tabs (so I'm not risking sticking a video of sensitive stuff on the net). So closing a few tabs doesn't resolve the issue (the tab also doesn't visibly close until you change focus)
2019-07-18 14:03:32
Going into KDE's settings and turning the compositor off restored Firefox's behaviour. What isn't clear, of course, is whether that's just because it causes a graphics reset (flushing out whatever the real cause was) or if the issue is with the compositor.
2019-09-07 10:15:44
2020-12-07 11:08:05
2021-05-26 08:43:56
To re-state the initial problem:
- Dual headed setup running KDE
- If on the right-hand screen I open a Twitter image, the panel will turn off (I have to ctrl-W to close the tab and restore)
- No sign of the same on the left
I've previously observed it happening with other sites too - Observium graphs seemingly being a particular favourite, but some news sites trigger it too.
I'd largely come to the conclusion it was something to do with lack of resources GPU side - either putting too much load on it's compute core, or perhaps exhausting available video memory.
-----
However, my setup has changed a bit. I'm in the process of moving that desktop back out of my workflow, ready for a full wipe. I'm now at the point where it's gone back to being a single-headed setup (using 1 of the 27" screens previously attached).
But, loading a news story yesterday led to the panel going black (until I closed the tab with
The one thing that remains the same, is the port on the graphics card that that monitor is cabled into - this might very well be a fault with the graphics card.
2021-06-21 14:22:26
I guess the answer is probably a dodgy contact or similar.
2021-06-21 14:22:31
2021-06-21 14:22:31
2021-06-21 14:22:35