8

After upgrading from 17.10 to 18.04, I started experiencing a strange graphics issue: text and background in scrollable parts of some windows were getting "scrambled". I performed a fresh installation of Ubuntu 18.04.1 when it became available (formatting the system partitions), but this did not resolve the problem.

However, I cannot reproduce this problem in a fresh account, even if I copy over my entire dconf configuration! I also tried resetting the dconf configuration in the affected account and disabling (all) GNOME Shell extensions, but it did not help.

The problem appears usually when I try to scroll the text in a scrollable area or resize the window. Maybe other parts of windows are also affected. Sometimes the problem appears immediately on opening a window.

When I scroll a scrollable area or resize the whole window, text and background get scrambled by overlapping on themselves. Sometimes black or transparent areas appear. GNOME Calculator 3.28.2 and gitg 3.26 windows are strongly affected. With GNOME Calculator the issue it the easiest to reproduce -- it suffices to launch it.

Which system or user settings could cause such problem?

I am attaching pictures which show the problem.

Glitch in GNOME Calculator

Glitch in Software Update

I have Intel HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2).

By the way, 3D gaming works fine.

Things I tried that did not help:

  1. sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-intel,

  2. sudo update-initramfs -u.

  3. Reinstall Ubuntu 18.04.1 completely.

  4. dconf reset -f / and disable GNOME Shell extensions.

Alexey
  • 763
  • 2
  • 10
  • 29
  • 1
    Useless comment: don't fight it. Just reinstall. I had that issue https://askubuntu.com/q/1031549/350004 and gave up and reinstall a fresh ubuntu. – solsTiCe May 08 '18 at 17:33
  • have you installed graphics drivers? what is your graphics card? – Joshua Besneatte May 08 '18 at 18:05
  • My update today installed "intel-firmware-microcode"... I wonder if that would do anything for you? I swear I have had this happen to me before and it was a driver of some sort that fixed it. What is your lsmod and lspci output? – Joshua Besneatte May 08 '18 at 20:37

6 Answers6

8

I decided to clean up a bit some abandoned "dot-files" in my home folder (the home directory of the affected account) and managed to resolve the problem.

The problem was caused by my .xinputrc file that contained a single line of code:

run_im xim

In comments it was saying that it was created by im-config. (I do not remember why I executed im-config.) After I removed this file, the glitches were gone.

Update. It seems that the file got automatically regenerated with the following content:

# im-config(8) generated on Sun, 29 Jul 2018 09:11:43 +0200
run_im ibus
# im-config signature: 1badc17f2a2c24108e97cd2fd412e476  -

There is currently no problems with this new content. (I am not sure if the file was regenerated by Ubuntu.)

Alexey
  • 763
  • 2
  • 10
  • 29
  • I guess you've changed input method because of keyboard shortcut clashes (like ctrl+shift+u for example). Applying this solution will help for the glitches but also will bring the keyboard issues back. I love Linux o_O – topr Oct 07 '19 at 09:15
3

I had the same graphical issues in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (after upgrading from version 16.04.5 to 18.04.1), only the following command solved the problems:

$ dconf reset -f /org/gnome/
realmic
  • 31
  • 2
2

Reinstall the Drivers

Per this answerr try reinstalling intel drivers:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-core
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

If this doesn't work, you might be able to fix it by tweaking settings with intel goodies:

sudo apt install intel-microcode inteltool intel-gpu-tools

But I don't know how to use them so you are on your own. Here is a reference manual for intel-gpu-tools and you can always read the manpages. eg

man intel-gpu-tools
Joshua Besneatte
  • 4,773
  • 5
  • 23
  • 42
  • I tried the first three commands, they didn't help. gitg windows are still scrambled. – Alexey May 08 '18 at 22:57
  • is it just gitg? did you reinstall that? did you install xserver-xorg-video-intel and reboot? did you install intel-microcode? – Joshua Besneatte May 08 '18 at 23:11
  • Everything is the same. I installed xserver-xorg-video-intel and rebooted, and i already had intel-microcode (but i would be quite surprised if it was related). – Alexey May 09 '18 at 06:45
2

When you run update-initramfs you should not be getting error messages for missing skylake drivers.

Under Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:

$ sudo update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.14.34-041434-generic
Adding /lib/firmware/i915/skl_guc_ver9_33.bin

Under Ubuntu 18.04 LTS:

$ sudo update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-20-generic
Adding /lib/firmware/i915/skl_guc_ver9_33.bin

In particular you should be seeing the last line. If not follow the instructions here: Updated kernel to 4.8 now missing firmware warnings

WinEunuuchs2Unix
  • 102,282
0

i don't know if you still have the problem, but i experienced the same bug while using Ubuntu 18.04.2 with Ubuntu Wayland. Switching back to Ubuntu from Ubuntu Wayland after reboot solved my problem.

michaelmixon
  • 143
0

I changed my setting in "Settings>Region & language>Manage Installed Languages>language>Keyboard input method system" to "XIM" in order to make short cuts of a software developing tool (Intellij IDEA) work correctly but it makes this problem and changing to "IBus" and rebooting resolved the issue.

Esmaeil Nikfekr
  • 1