Debian Squeeze Monitor flickers occasionally

austinium · 02-25-2011, 12:14 AM

My monitor keeps flickering every now and then, i happens more than a couple of times in a day. I have Debian Squeeze installed, the system is updated.

Below is the relevant o/p from lspci -v

Code:

$lspci -v
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0a) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0294
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 26
	Memory at dfe00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
	I/O ports at ecd8 [size=8]
	Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
	Memory at dff00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: i915

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0a)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 0294
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0
	Memory at dfe80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>

I have xserver-xorg-video-intel v2:2.9.1-2 installed.

How do i fix this?

Edit: after making this post i noticed that there was update to v2:2.13.0-5 available so installed
xserver-xorg-video-intel v2:2.13.0-5. However, that doesnt seem to have helped the screen just flickered again.

Edit: I ran # cat /var/log/messages| tail -n 45 and found the following, could it be a bug in the driver?

Code:

# cat /var/log/messages| tail -n 45
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    5.553577] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    5.772948] i915 0000:00:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    5.775506] mtrr: type mismatch for c0000000,10000000 old: write-back new: write-combining
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    5.775508] [drm] MTRR allocation failed.  Graphics performance may suffer.
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    5.775590] [drm] set up 7M of stolen space
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    5.999755] [drm] DAC-6: set mode 1280x1024 13
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    6.024929] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 160x64
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    6.029862] fb0: inteldrmfb frame buffer device
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    6.029863] registered panic notifier
Feb 25 09:10:03 vikram kernel: [    6.029882] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 0

Thanks,
Vikram

EDDY1 · 02-25-2011, 05:01 PM

http://linuxindetails.wordpress.com/...ite-combining/

austinium · 02-27-2011, 10:41 PM

I added the kernel parameters mentioned in the blog

Code:

$ dmesg |grep mtrr
[    0.000000] Found optimal setting for mtrr clean up
[    0.000000] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-3-686 root=UUID=34daade7-59de-4fb2-8db3-009fe79f68e6 ro quiet enable_mtrr_cleanup mtrr_spare_reg_nr=1

I am going to wait and see if screen flickers again, and then mark the thread closed.

EDDY1 · 02-28-2011, 12:31 AM

I hope it works there isn't much information out there, that relates to your problem.
According to your dmesg output it appears that it may be solved. Fingers crossed for you.

austinium · 02-28-2011, 11:06 PM

It's not flickered since the, iam going to wait some more(just in case) and then mark the thread closed.
Any idea why the MTRR allocation failed???

austinium · 03-01-2011, 06:20 AM

It flickered once today, couldnt get much from the logs (they were full of [21114.165386] VFS: busy inodes on changed media or resized disk sr0, but thats another issue, unclean eject of CD-ROM)