[SOLVED] Upgraded kernel, lost desktop effects?

Message

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Wed Feb 25, 2015 6:25 pm

I upgraded my laptop from kernel 3.17.8-r1 to 3.18.7 and have an odd problem. I do use desktop effects in KDE but now when I logout I get loads of artifacts and such on the screen instead of the outside-area dimming down to highlight the dialog box. I am not sure where to begin on this one. I did use my kernel config from the old kernel.

*UPDATE*

I tried emerge -av --oneshot xf86-video-intel libva-intel-driver and that did not fix the issue. I did reboot after rebuilding them.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:47 pm

Anybody? I am not sure where to begin. I can post logs, but I see no errors related to the artifacts. It is kind of like an old ATI driver when playing Unreal. No "errors", but the effects are not correct.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Thu Feb 26, 2015 1:56 pm

Alright, this is strange. I was checking the advanced settings and everything was set correctly (OpenGL 1.2, Native, etc etc) and I simply changed "Native" to "Raster" and then straight back to "Native", and hit apply. All of the settings are the same as before, but now it works. I guess some setting, while set correctly, had to be reapplied. I believe I am good now.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 2:04 am

I was mistaken. The problem is still here. What do I need to do to figure out the issue and resolve it? I am stuck now.

s0be · Post by **s0be** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 6:54 am

There is a chance that a bug was discovered in one of the hardware acceleration branches in kernel for your card and some feature has been disabled. What exact hardware is it (lspci output), and kernel dmesg output might provide some insight into the problem. Have you booted into the old kernel to see if the old kernel still works? That'd verify it's a kernel problem.

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:36 pm

I already removed the old kernel. I can post you the information for my onboard card though.

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00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

More detailed info...

Code: Select all

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0233]
        Kernel driver in use: i915
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0233]

The output from dmesg shows no errors, only a warning about not checking /usr (it is on its own partition).

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Fri Mar 06, 2015 4:32 pm

I booted this morning (no changes, no updates, nothing) and when I fired up Aurora I got the following.

Artifacting

No errors in dmesg or the system log. What is going on? Is kernel 3.18 a regression for Intel HD Graphics?

The_Great_Sephiroth · Post by **The_Great_Sephiroth** » Tue Mar 10, 2015 1:43 am

Well, I fixed it. All it took was backing up my data, zeroing the disk, and reinstalling! In all seriousness I did a planned reinstall this weekend and now I am golden. My guess is that something needed to be rebuilt between 3.17 and 3.18 and it wasn't listed as needing an upgrade, and I had no clue what it was. The system is fine now. I know this isn't a solution for everybody, but since I was going to wipe it anyway, it worked for me.

If you are wondering why i reloaded my system it is simple. This was my first Gentoo install and I had a LOAD of wasted space. Too many partitions (17!), partitions too large (/var/tmp/portage was around 32GiB, now at 10GiB), and other such mistakes I made when I was learning. I now have 40GB dedicated to the OS and build space and such, and the rest is split between /home and /vm (my partition for VirtualBox, which is symlinked to every users' ~/.config/VirtualBox) and I am happy again!