Bug 1311281

Summary: Nouveau breaks VNC
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Jerry LeVan <jerry.levan>
Component: xorg-x11-drv-nouveauAssignee: Ben Skeggs <bskeggs>
Status: CLOSED EOL QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 23CC: airlied, ajax, bskeggs, jerry.levan, pedrogfrancisco
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2016-12-20 18:58:33 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description Jerry LeVan 2016-02-23 19:57:00 UTC
Description of problem:
Using VNC to connect to Fedora 23 running the latest (Feb 23) Nouveau driver results in apparent continuous scrolling of the workspaces on the target
machine.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
xorg-x11-drv-nouveau-1.0.12-3.fc23.x86_64

How reproducible:
Every time

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Use some vnc client and connect to Fedora 23 using nouveau
2.Watch workspaces roll by...
3.

Actual results:
It looks like workspaces keep scrolling on the vnc screen, some
appear to be old buffers cuz the date on the screen is too old

Expected results:
A stable image of the desktop that can be manipulated with the
mouse and keyboard.

Additional info:
I have a f23 virtual box VM on one of my macs. It does not use
nouveau. On the affected real Fedora 23 box I can use vncviewer
to connect to the VM and it works properly. I can also connect
to the VM via Real VNC from my iPad and the connection is stable.

If I try to VNC to the nouveau machine from my Mac, iPad, or VM Fedora
using a variety of VNC clients I always getting the scrolling behavior.

Comment 1 Jerry LeVan 2016-03-01 18:15:44 UTC
Ok, here is a bit more info

•6th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ Quad Core Processor + NVIDIA
GeForce GTX 950M 4GB Discrete Graphics.

I have noticed that some of the screens that roll by have a much
earlier date ( date time appears at the top of all of my screens).
Is the server grabbing random memory from the video card?

Is there any thing I can do to help pin-point the problem.

[jerry@bigbox ~]$ gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.Vino
org.gnome.Vino notify-on-connect true
org.gnome.Vino alternative-port uint16 5900
org.gnome.Vino disable-background false
org.gnome.Vino use-alternative-port false
org.gnome.Vino icon-visibility 'client'
org.gnome.Vino use-upnp false
org.gnome.Vino view-only false
org.gnome.Vino prompt-enabled false
org.gnome.Vino disable-xdamage false
org.gnome.Vino authentication-methods ['vnc']
org.gnome.Vino network-interface ''
org.gnome.Vino require-encryption false
org.gnome.Vino mailto ''
org.gnome.Vino lock-screen-on-disconnect false
org.gnome.Vino vnc-password 'dmljh5j'

Comment 2 Jerry LeVan 2016-03-03 18:33:52 UTC
Closer examination of the erroroneous screens seems to reveal
that they are simply replicas of earlier screens.

eg: I booted into classical gnome and the trash can partially
obscured the home folder. I dragged it down a bit. VNC
from another machine will intermittantly display the original
screen with the obscured home folder.

another bit of evidence:
The time is shown on the top of my gnome 3 screens. when connecting
to the gnome 3 instance and the screens start appearing/disapearing
some of the screens show older time stamps and over time these time
stamps are not changing ( at least for 10~15 minutes ).

I can use vncviewer to connect to a 32bit Fedora VM on my mac
and it works fine.

Hope this helps...

Comment 3 Jerry LeVan 2016-03-06 13:47:11 UTC
Sigh,

It appears that the GTX 950m does not even start on my laptop...

[root@bigbox vgaswitcheroo]# cat switch
0:IGD:+:Pwr:0000:00:02.0
1:DIS: :DynOff:0000:01:00.0
[root@bigbox vgaswitcheroo]# 

echoing ON to switch does not power on the card.
echoing DDIS to switch generates a login loop when 
doing a logout/login sequence.

Running glxgears shows

[jerry@bigbox log]$ glxgears -info
Running synchronized to the vertical refresh.  The framerate should be
approximately the same as the monitor refresh rate.
GL_RENDERER   = Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (Skylake GT2) 
GL_VERSION    = 3.0 Mesa 11.1.0 (git-525f3c2)

So I suspect the VNC problem has nothing to do with nouveau...

Close this puppy.

Comment 4 Pedro Francisco 2016-03-13 12:35:46 UTC
Are you sure it isn't related?

Because the problem went away after I installed NVidia driver (and blacklisted nouveau in the process).

Comment 5 Jerry LeVan 2016-03-14 13:51:53 UTC
I have an "Optimus" system, the Nvidia card does not speak directly
to the video ( at least that is what I understand ) and is not
turned on.

Using the tiger vnc server does not generate the same problem, but it
has its own problems ( Evolution does not seem to be able to talk to
gmail or apple mail ).

Any hints on how to prevent nouveau from being loaded?

Adding nouveau to /usr/lib/modprobe.d/dist-blacklist.conf
does not seem to do the job...

I would like to see it the VNC problem presists if the i915
intel driver is the only video driver loaded.

Jerry

Comment 6 Pedro Francisco 2016-03-14 13:57:22 UTC
Please follow article http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2015/fedora-nvidia-guide/ , points 2.6.1 to 2.6.5 , if you are willing to.

As usual, please have backups first :)

Comment 7 Pedro Francisco 2016-07-29 12:19:11 UTC
Does this still happen on F24/Fedora 24? [my test laptop is busy currently]

Comment 8 Jerry LeVan 2016-07-29 16:27:38 UTC
Fedora 24 appears to have fixed the problem :)

Jerry

Comment 9 Fedora End Of Life 2016-11-24 15:43:49 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 23 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 23. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
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Comment 10 Fedora End Of Life 2016-12-20 18:58:33 UTC
Fedora 23 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2016-12-20. Fedora 23 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
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