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I left my laptop active for a while, and at a certain point, the monitor turned black, and when I rebooted it, it was flickering and showing some weird vertical lines and when turning it off it showed a "FIFO pipe a underrun error".

After several rebooting, the flickering problem went away (re-appeared later on, then went away again), but the fifo problem stayed.

I'm definitely no expert here and don't know what to do. Do you have any suggestions?

I'm using a Dell Latitude 5590 and I got Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS.

This is my graphic card: Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)

This is my processor: Intel® Core™ i7-8650U CPU @ 1.90GHz × 8

Here's the output of uname -a:

Linux nicholas-PC 5.8.0-53-generic #60~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Thu May 6 09:52:46 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

image

[NEW EDIT] If I connect an extra monitor through the hdmi cable that problem stays in the laptop monitor, but not in the extra one.

Thank you :)

Bruni
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NichoMe
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  • Maybe this helps: https://askubuntu.com/questions/895329/flickering-screen-cpu-pipe-b-fifo-underrun-when-i-use-the-termnal In particular the article about disabling CPU c-states in BIOS – Bruni May 12 '21 at 15:42
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    Hi, I changed the line in the grub as suggested. I'll tell you if it starts flickering again. Thanks ! – NichoMe May 12 '21 at 16:57
  • It did not work :( – NichoMe May 13 '21 at 12:06
  • It was worth a try. An alternative would be running a different kernel. E.g. by disabling HWE. – Bruni May 13 '21 at 15:12
  • Could you please expand on this, I'm really a newbie and I'm not sure what to do, thanks. – NichoMe May 15 '21 at 09:21
  • A first step might be looking if you have multiple kernel installed and trying an older one (look here https://askubuntu.com/questions/82140/how-can-i-boot-with-an-older-kernel-version). Also please modify your question and add the output of uname -a – Bruni May 17 '21 at 05:55
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    I added the output of the command and a beautiful picture with the weird frame flickering. – NichoMe May 20 '21 at 18:58
  • Also, a bit weirdly, if I connect an extra monitor through the HDMI cable that problem stays in the laptop monitor, but not in the extra one. Might it be hardware then? – NichoMe May 22 '21 at 15:25

1 Answers1

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My system is Lubuntu 22.04 LTS. The same problem begun after changing to this version.

I also had until yesterday these strange flickering vertical lines after the screen went black (after a while of inactivity) resulting in an unresponsive system.

My laptop has an integrated Intel graphics controller and after the following change in the acceleration method for this controller the 'lockup' has not returned during the time that I left that laptop on since last night. This morning the screen was again black, but: it returned without the strange vertical lines and the system was responsive and okay, so it might help you.

Nowadays, Intel is using three methods of graphic acceleration in Linux:

  1. UXA
  2. SNA
  3. Glamor

To fix this, change the method of graphic acceleration used by default (Glamor) to SNA.

How to fix? Let's go.

STEPS:

Open a terminal and type:

$ cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/

$ sudo nano 20-intel.conf

NOTE: I'm using nano text editor, but you can use your favorite text editor (pluma, vim, etc.)

In this file I just wrote this:

    Section "Device"
        Identifier "Intel Graphics"
        Driver "i915"
        Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
        Option "TearFree" "true"
        Option "Tiling" "True"
        Option "SwapbuffersWait" "True"
    EndSection

The 3 lines after "AccelMethod" are added by me because I also had some tearing issues on the screen, this way that is prevented also. Of course, you could leave these last 3 lines out and see if that is enough to do the trick for you.

Save and exit. Change will have effect after reboot.

plopper
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  • I am a few days further and the problem has not returned, so for me this works. My systems does not show screen flickering at all and before my system hung often, but now it runs smooth without any hickups. – plopper Dec 28 '22 at 10:51