Bug 707809

Summary:	Regressions in intel xorg driver in rhel 6.1
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6	Reporter:	Kurt Bechstein <bkurt>
Component:	xorg-x11-drv-intel	Assignee:	Adam Jackson <ajax>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	6.1
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2012-02-13 17:59:28 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Kurt Bechstein 2011-05-26 02:52:15 UTC

Description of problem:
I recently upgraded my laptop (Dell Latitude D830) from RHEL 6.0 Workstation to 6.1. Ever since upgrading I noticed two issues with the Intel video on this laptop. The first issue is that I noticed one of my CPU cores was pegged at 100% usage constantly. I tried disabled all desktop effects and turning off anything different I had done from a desktop perspective and it didn't help. The output of top showed that the X server was what was chewing up my cpu. So after noticing the second issue that I will cover next, I downgraded the recently updated xorg-x11-drv-intel package from the 2.14.0-1.el6 version in 6.1 to the 2.11.0-7.el6.i686 version from 6.0 and the high cpu usage went away.

The second issue I noticed appears to be a bug in the Intel driver from what I have gathered. Also, based on what I have seen there isn't a solution just yet, but I could be wrong about that. In general I have noticed issues with WINE applications having black artifacting going on in them. It seems to be pretty well documented here:
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28798.
This issue also is resolved by downgrading to the previous version of the driver.

Here is the relative lspci output for my Video chipset. Let me know if I can help further.

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
2.14.0-1.el6

How reproducible:
Very

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Install latest xorg-x11-drv-intel driver for 6.1.
2.Observe high cpu usage by X server and artifacting in WINE apps.
3.Downgrade to 6.0 driver and both problems go away.

Actual results:

Expected results:

Additional info:

Comment 2 Kurt Bechstein 2011-06-10 14:01:47 UTC

I just wanted to add an additional note to this.  I also noticed that when running the new xorg-x11-drv-intel package I noticed almost twice the cpu usage when flash content was playing in the browser.  I downgraded back to the old driver and the cpu usage was about half.  Just thought it was worth mentioning.

Comment 3 Kurt Bechstein 2011-06-15 13:06:37 UTC

Today I experienced the high cpu usage on one of my cpu cores even using the old driver and the only way I could stop the X server from pegging one of the cpu cores was to reboot my laptop.  After that it was fine again so this doesn't necessarily seem to be an issue with intel driver as far as the cpu usage issue goes.  The issue with wine applications is very real though and definitely a problem with the newer intel driver.  let me know how I can help in any way.

Comment 4 RHEL Program Management 2011-10-07 16:15:01 UTC

Since RHEL 6.2 External Beta has begun, and this bug remains
unresolved, it has been rejected as it is not proposed as
exception or blocker.

Red Hat invites you to ask your support representative to
propose this request, if appropriate and relevant, in the
next release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Comment 5 Kurt Bechstein 2011-10-24 13:35:04 UTC

This one actually appears to be resolved in the RHEL 6.2 beta testing that I have done since the version of the intel xorg drivers has been updated.

Comment 6 Adam Jackson 2012-02-13 17:59:28 UTC

Closing per comment #5.  Thanks for testing!