Ubuntu
screen-resolution-extra package

gnome-display-properties silently broke all my hardware acceleration and movie watching

Bug #377172 reported by Nathaniel Smith
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
screen-resolution-extra (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnome-control-center

After upgrading to Jaunty, I tried fiddling around with the new version of gnome-display-properties, with my laptop (1024x768 display) and an external monitor (1680x1050 display). When attempting to place them next to each other, gnome-display-properties displayed a cheerful note informing me that it couldn't do that because of a problem with my xorg.conf, but it could happily fix that problem and I really should click "Ok". So I did.

This added a line like
  Subsection "Display"
    Virtual 2704 1050
  EndSubSection
to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf

My laptop (Thinkpad X60) has an Intel GM945, and the intel drivers top out at a Virtual size of 2048x2048. This configuration change made them very unhappy.

The actual symptom I experienced was that some days later, after the next time I restarted X, I discovered that all video programs (totem, mplayer, etc.) that I tried to start would simply crash immediately. XVideo was broken, and none of them are set up to handle this gracefully. 3d acceleration also appears to be broken.

I'm not sure what the best solution here is -- it seems unfortunate that gnome-display-properties would need to "know" that intel drivers have a particular limit on their Virtual size -- but the bug is easily triggered, and *completely* unfathomable to a naive user. At a minimum, the cheery message should be changed to something which includes a warning, so that if things do get broken the user has at least a chance of remembering and looking in the right place.

(Also, on the user experience end, I am still annoyed at gnome-display-properties. I trusted it! It lied to me! Screw you, 'xrandr --auto' works better anyway! Okay, thanks for letting me get that part off my chest.)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:2.26.0-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

Revision history for this message
Nathaniel Smith (njs) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

the issue is either an intel driver one or a screen-resolution-extra one which does the virtual change

affects: gnome-control-center (Ubuntu) → xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

Hi njs,

Thanks for including the attached files. Could you also include your /var/log/Xorg.0.log (or Xorg.0.log.old) from after reproducing the issue?

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

tags: added: needs-xorglog
Changed in xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Nathaniel Smith (njs) wrote :

It's well documented that the 945GM does not work well with a "Virtual" setting of >2048x2048; the bug is that ATM, gnome-display-properties is happy to insert such settings into xorg.conf. So to fix this, either
  a) the intel driver needs to Just Work with weird Virtual settings (possibly by truncating them to 2048x2048, I'm not sure why it doesn't do that already; perhaps it would cause other problems)
  b) or, "screen-resolution-extra", whatever that is, needs to stop inserting such Virtual settings into xorg.conf.

I'm not sure how my Xorg.0.log helps with either, but, oh well, here you go.

Sebastien Bacher (seb128)
Changed in xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → New
Revision history for this message
Geir Ove Myhr (gomyhr) wrote :

Changed the package to screen-resolution-extra which is responsible for setting the virtual resolution for dual-head setup. What you are really suggesting is that instead of only computing the virtual resolution needed, it should also have a table of the capabilities for the different video cards and warn the user before setting the virtual resolution to something the video card/driver cannot handle. Right?

affects: xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu) → screen-resolution-extra (Ubuntu)
Changed in screen-resolution-extra (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
Revision history for this message
Nathaniel Smith (njs) wrote :

That would be one solution, yes. Just give some sort of informative error if (the user has the appropriate sort of intel card) AND (the requested resolution is > 2048x2048).

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in screen-resolution-extra (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
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