UPDATE 2/23/18
This issue stems from the 7.10 version of the Freedesktop radeon driver.
A workaround to the issue is to downgrade to the 7.9 version of the driver. Details of the investigation and workaround steps are below.
The primary symptom of the issue is a continous stream of warning messages in the Xorg.0.log, which keeps growing.
The warning messages look like:
[ 4800.851] (WW) RADEON(0): flip queue failed: Invalid argument
[ 4800.851] (WW) RADEON(0): Page flip failed: Invalid argument
HISTORY
I performed a normal upgrade on 2/15/18 through the software manager in 16.04LTS.
It upgraded the following libraries (/var/log/dpkg.log [pkg][old ver][new ver]):
libegl1-mesa-dev:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libwayland-egl1-mesa:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-ubuntu0~16.04.1
libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libegl1-mesa:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libegl1-mesa:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgbm1:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgbm1:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libosmesa6:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libosmesa6:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgles2-mesa:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgl1-mesa-glx:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libglapi-mesa:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libglapi-mesa:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgl1-mesa-dri:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
libxatracker2:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
linux-firmware:all 1.157.15 1.157.16
mesa-vdpau-drivers:i386 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
mesa-vdpau-drivers:amd64 17.2.4-0ubuntu1~16.04.4 17.2.8-0ubuntu0~16.04.1
xserver-xorg-video-radeon-hwe-16.04:amd64 1:7.9.0-0ubuntu1~16.04.1 1:7.10.0-1~16.04.1
xserver-xorg-video-ati-hwe-16.04:amd64 1:7.9.0-0ubuntu1~16.04.1 1:7.10.0-1~16.04.1
I should note, this is not the compiz/unity update package list. It is the mesa drivers.
Upon reboot, I started getting a blank screen with only a mouse pointer when the display manager started.
I press CTRL+ALT+F1 to go into console, and I can find the following in the Xorg.0.log:
[ 4800.851] (WW) RADEON(0): flip queue failed: Invalid argument
[ 4800.851] (WW) RADEON(0): Page flip failed: Invalid argument
These warning messages are constantly streaming into the log file, and it keeps growing. This wasn't present before the library update.
Video h/w on my laptop:
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: RV516/M64-S [Mobility Radeon X2300]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
resources: irq:16 memory:d0000000-d3ffffff ioport:4000(size=256) memory:d8300000-d830ffff memory:c0000-dffff
1st lines of modinfo output:
filename: /lib/modules/4.13.0-26-generic/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/radeon.ko
license: GPL and additional rights
description: ATI Radeon
I could really, really use some help here.... THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!
UPDATE 2/16/18:
I appear to be booting to the wrong VT display. All of the symptoms above are true; however, if I perform a CTRL+ALT+F1 (up to F6) at startup and then immediately perform a CTRL+ALT+F7, which switches the VT, I go to my normal desktop as if it had booted correctly. CTRL+ALT+F7 without first going to console does not do anything. So, this simplifies things somewhat as it now looks to be a config issue. Lightdm seems to start Xorg on the wrong display. I tried a vt.handoff=7 on the linux kernel command line, and this did not help.
Here is the output of w immediately after pressing CTRL+ALT+F7 and going to the normal desktop:
09:38:01 up 44 min, 1 user, load average: 0.60, 0.67, 0.82
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
user1 tty7 :0 08:53 44:14 6:16 0.29s /sbin/upstart -
This display listing appears normal.
I should note that compiz and unity still seem to function. The desktop is fully available and already loaded when I switch to tty7.
UPDATE 2/19/18:
I don't believe this to be a duplicate of the compiz/unity issue. The issue I observed resulted from the radeon driver update (7.9->7.10) on the morning of 2/15/18. The compiz/unity update has yet to be applied to my system. In fact, there is one other post that looks to be the same issue as I am seeing, it is: /var/log/Xorg.0.log file growing fast
The warning string in the Xorg.0.log, flip queue failed, is found in the following driver:
/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/radeon_drv.so
found in package:
xserver-xorg-video-radeon-hwe-16.04
Specifically, the source file:
./src/drmmode_display.c: xf86DrvMsg(scrn->scrnIndex, X_WARNING, "flip queue failed: %s\n",
Line 3093 in the source code of drmmode_display.c:
flip_error:
xf86DrvMsg(scrn->scrnIndex, X_WARNING, "flip queue failed: %s\n",
strerror(errno));
error:
if (drm_queue_seq)
radeon_drm_abort_entry(drm_queue_seq);
else if (crtc)
drmmode_flip_abort(crtc, flipdata);
else {
abort(NULL, data);
drmmode_fb_reference(pRADEONEnt->fd, &flipdata->fb, NULL);
free(flipdata);
}
xf86DrvMsg(scrn->scrnIndex, X_WARNING, "Page flip failed: %s\n",
strerror(errno));
I logged this as: [Bug 1750393] Blank screen with only mouse pointer after mesa driver update; display does not switch to tty7 upon lightdm start; Xorg.0.log quickly grows on Launchpad.
