[Pkg-tigervnc-devel] Bug#855441: tigervnc-xorg-extension redraw issues

[Martin Dorey]

Package: tigervnc-xorg-extension
Version: 1.7.0+dfsg-2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I'd really like to be able to connect to :0 on my work computer from
home.  I used to do that with vino and gnome-fallback on Wheezy.  The
full Gnome 3 experience is slow and generates several Mbit/s of network
traffic with vino.  TigerVNC seems like the way of the future.  If I
start a dedicated TigerVNC server on :1, then it works great.  But I
think I need tigervnc-xorg-extension to connect to my Nvidia-based :0.
When I connect to :0, however, my client display often isn't completely
updated when the server display changes.  I have to play games dragging
selections, moving windows or asking the client to ask for a complete
refresh to see what's going on.

I initially tried TigerVNC 1.6.0 on Jessie, as Jessie is what I really
need to work.  Antipating that you won't care about that smelly old
lashup, I then tried TigerVNC 1.7.0 on Stretch, again with Nvidia's
proprietary driver.  Same behavior.  Now I've also tried a cleaner
install of Stretch with Intel integrated graphics, again Gnome 3, again
TigerVNC 1.7.0.  I think I'm seeing the same behavior, although here I
don't have the same sort of clients.  Connecting back to the same system
with tigervncviewer gets me:

 CConn:       End of stream

On the second and subsequent attempts, that's prefixed by:

Server sent us an invalid screen layout

I tried - and succeeded in - connecting with Chicken of the VNC, an
ancient Mac OS VNC client.  I think I had the cursor stuck in the top
left bug there, but also I wasn't seeing output that I initiated on
the server.  I tried - and again succeeded - in connecting with a
RealVNC client on iPhone, probably both reasonably uptodate.  Again,
server-initiated changes were not displayed on the client.

I had previously suggested that I'd try with "nouveau" instead of nvidia
drivers but there seems little point when I see what's probably the same
behavior on this other system with Intel graphics.  Now I'm at something
of a loss.  I skimmed through the titles of everything in upstream's
issue tracker without seeing anything that grabbed me as relevant (and
obviously Googled too).

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages tigervnc-xorg-extension depends on:
ii  libaudit1          1:2.6.7-1
ii  libc6              2.24-8
ii  libgcc1            1:6.2.1-5
ii  libpam0g           1.1.8-3.5
ii  libstdc++6         6.2.1-5
ii  xserver-xorg-core  2:1.19.0-3

Versions of packages tigervnc-xorg-extension recommends:
ii  tigervnc-common  1.7.0+dfsg-2

tigervnc-xorg-extension suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information