Bug#971343: Animated background/wallpaper (changing over time) causes system freeze on Nouveau

Wed Sep 30 16:31:06 BST 2020

>
> On Tue, 29 Sep 2020 at 22:29:29 -0300, Leandro Cunha wrote:
> > > * Is this a new installation, or have you been using this hardware with
> > >   Linux for a while? If you've been using it previously, have you had
> > >   other graphics- or freeze-related issues with it?
> >
> > Only in version 3.36.3 onwards, if I'm not mistaken. But it is the first time.
>
> Presumably you've also been upgrading other packages, like the kernel
> and graphics drivers. Please try installing the kernel from Debian 10
> (linux-image-4.19.0-11-amd64) and booting into that - you can have
> multiple kernels available on the same system, so this is a lot easier
> than switching between versions of user-space packages, which is why
> I'm suggesting to try it first. Then see whether you still get this same
> bug with the older kernel.
>
> If you still see the bug, another thing to try would be to confirm which
> user-space packages cause the regression. The best way to do this is
> probably to set up a temporary parallel installation of Debian 10 on the
> same hardware (maybe on an external USB disk if you can get a suitable one),
> and gradually upgrade it towards current testing:

I did this test and there was no crash, but see the attached
screenshot to see how the wallpaper.
I also analyzed the logs, which is my custom as a developer to analyze
the logs to track problems like this and attached them to do their
analysis too, now with Kernel 4.19.

> * reduce the size of a partition enough to fit a new partition for
>   Debian 10, or use a USB disk (you'll need at least 10G for an
>   installation with just gnome-session and its dependencies, 20G is safer)
> * install Debian 10 with at least the gnome-session package
>   (if you have enough space, using the GNOME desktop task in the installer
>   will be easiest; if you don't have much space, just install gnome-session)
> * upgrade to 3.34.4-1 from:
>   deb [check-valid-until=no] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20200226T030551Z sid main
> * try to reproduce the bug
> * upgrade to 3.36.2-1 from:
>   deb [check-valid-until=no] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20200501T154658Z sid main
> * try to reproduce the bug
> * upgrade to 3.36.3-1 from:
>   deb [check-valid-until=no] https://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20200604T025809Z sid main
> * try to reproduce the bug
> * if none of those show the bug, try upgrading to the latest version from
>   testing
>
> If your guess about 3.36.3 is right, then this must have been triggered by
> something that changed between 3.36.2 and 3.36.3, and that's a much smaller
> change to examine.

I used Ubuntu 20.04 when it was released and Manjaro Gnome on the
initial versions of Gnome 3.36 and did not see this bug occur. But I
went back to Debian in version 3.36.4 and saw the problem occur.

> When doing that, it would be helpful if you can upgrade only gnome-shell
> and the packages that it requires - try to avoid upgrading the kernel or
> the Mesa graphics drivers, to reduce the number of things you're varying.
>
> If none of that makes the bug appear, try the same process with the
> Mesa graphics drivers: libgles2, libgl1, libglx-mesa0, libgl1-mesa-dri,
> libegl1 and libegl-mesa0.
>
> The apt logs in /var/log/apt will tell us exactly what was upgraded in the
> apt transaction that triggered the regression.
>
> > > What do you mean by "restored the original system settings"?
> >
> > I delete the configuration file.
>
> Which one?

Configuration archive of dconf.

> > > What do you mean by "it would only start if [...]"? GNOME would only
> > > start if you did that? The laptop would only boot up if you did that?
> > > Something else?
> >
> > The answer is yes. Somehow you can't log in to a section.
>
> OK, this might give us more useful information: if you can't log
> in, but the computer doesn't freeze and you are able to work around
> it without rebooting, then we might be able to get a log with more
> information. Please could you try this:
>
> * make a note of the time: time before reproducing bug
> * reproduce the bug
> * recover by rebooting
> * make a note of the time again: time after rebooting
> * try to log in (which you say will fail)
> * delete the configuration file
> * note the time again: time before login
> * log in successfully
> * note the time again when login has finished: time after login
> * send the log from that whole period, and the times that you noted
>
> That will help to correlate log messages with what you observe.

In the bug attached see from 10:29 when I started testing with Kernel
4.19, until 10:44 that appears in the screen capture that shows both
wallpapers side by side. Normally the interface stopped responding,
but what I do is run su -c "cat /var/log/syslog > log" on tty to
check.
What calls attention that the screen is black, but the interface does
not freeze with this version of Kernel, being that I ran the tests on
Xorg where I had the best performance so far.

> > > I don't think we can necessarily treat GNOME freezing on
> > > more-than-10-year-old hardware as release-critical
> >
> > Gnome works well on this hardware that was on the market for years,
> > devices from 2011 and 2012 were still sold with this hardware is the
> > case with mine.
>
> Obviously we'd like it to continue to work, but hardware-specific
> failures are difficult (especially for people who don't have the hardware
> in front of them). If we treated every hardware-specific failure as
> a release-critical bug that prevented the next Debian release from
> happening, then we'd never be able to make a new release, because there's
> always at least one device that regresses.
>
> I've configured my (Intel-based) laptop to have the animated background to
> see whether I can reproduce anything similar, but it's had this
> configuration for 24 hours now without problems.
>
>     smcv
>
> On Wed, 30 Sep 2020 at 11:11:04 -0300, Leandro Cunha wrote:
> > It has a greater effect on use. I think it is more appropriate
> > to lower the severity to important.
>
> Thanks, I agree. We usually use 'important' for crash/freeze bugs that seem
> hardware-dependent or otherwise difficult to reproduce.

I still haven't found bug reports about other bug tracking systems and
problems in git, which makes me believe that it is something specific
to this laptop and the hardware used. I looked on gitlab.gnome.com and
didn't find any reports and on gnome bugzilla I didn't find anything
either, but I'm still investigating the causes of this problem doing
these bug reports, analyzing logs and doing tests.

>     smcv
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