I apologise in advance that I have not looked into this further (or attached any more hw details) just yet, as I am busy rebuilding my machine.

Maybe someone else has experienced a similar issue, or has some helpful insight. Any way, just to share and for info :

I blindly accepted the kernel update via slackpkg tool to 4.4.19 thinking it would not cause an issue. Normally I try read what's changed.

All went ok, except on reboot the machine's display was unstable - turning the screen off and on every few minutes or so amongst a few other things. No I did not check log messages and just went into 'rebuild' mode :-)

Anyway, gone back to 4.4.14 kernel and everything seems ok again.

I'm wondering if anything has changed in 4.4.19 regarding the radeon modules. I will experiment later and see if I spot anything (dmesg, syslogs, Xorg etc).

Have a nice day everyone.
Habs

Do you have flood of "[drm:drm_edid_block_valid [drm]] *ERROR*" in your syslog? Screen blinking every 10 seconds? If yes, it is an old bug reintroduced somewhere between 4.4.14 and 4.4.19. Got it on my machine with radeon RS690.
I resolved the issue by applying the tcp_input patch to 4.4.14 kernel and recompiling it.

The screen was not blinking every 10 secs, but it was about every few minutes or so switching off and on again, then another few minutes; same sort of idea but not as rapid. (machine is just an hd3200 gpu on the asustek M4A78 phenom II x4 board).

I'm reluctant to update to kernel 4.4.19 again, just in case as it takes a while to get back together without issue.

Perhaps a meaningless test, but I used and AMD eepc and upgraded to 4.4.19 on that (64 bit, amd C60 processor, hd6290 graphics, radeon etc..) and no problems seemingly - well not noticed any as yet.

and to answer that one, no it would seem.


I am at a loss - it is most annoying. I could post xorg log, syslog, dmesg and messages attachments, but will someone advise if this is the correct thing to do (or how best to do it)....and if I do will it help!

How can I establish what has changed between 4.4.14 and 4.4.19 in relation to this issue I am experiencing.


Just to clarify, it does appear that this only happens when an Xorg server/display is running... I cannot recall it happening at console level.
Is there something in the Xorg config files I could check (where would I start please) ?

Thank you

You could sift through the changelogs
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...angeLog-4.4.14
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...angeLog-4.4.15
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...angeLog-4.4.16
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...angeLog-4.4.17
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...angeLog-4.4.18
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/ker...angeLog-4.4.19
(Serious potential for even more frustration)
Or you could compare various settings between your kernel configs...
I have a really old AMD (ATI) mobile GPU in my daily driver, and I'm getting hit by a black screen after resume (non-reproducible)...have yet to get to the bottom of it.

Thanks for replying and the ideas etc.

I'm struggling to understand why this is happening; the 4.4.19 appears to work o the other machine; that might not mean much given different guts in it, but still.

Any way,I will go back to basics (of a sort) and check and re-seat things like wires, check for loose connections and stuff that perhaps I should have done first! :-)

I'll do that later today.


Best wishes for today to everyone.

i am going to mark this one as solved and 'close' it off.

I have checked connections, wires etc and it seems that it only happens on the VGA connection; the HDMI is ok.
It would seem, from my limited experience, fair to say that there is an issue regarding the hardware I am using rather than it being the kernel change.

Onwards. Thank you.

@badbetty

Let's do not dump some valuable hardware just because some crazy bunnies from the Linus's Team started to ignore the cheap video cards.

And saying cheap video cards I understand something like Radeon HD 3000, Radeon HD 4350, Radeon HD 6450, NVidia GeForce 210, NVidia GeForce 6200, NVidia GeForce 8200.

I suggest you to go back to a kernel from the series 4.1.x, any superior series behaving naughty on that cheap Radeon and NVidia hardware (if you go Nouveau, but not only). At least on my case are affected all my six computers.

I hadn't realised others had [similar] issues with the 4.4.19 kernel. I wish I knew what it was.....but given the HDMI port works (I am using that rather than dumping) and the VGA doesn't, I just 'guessed' it must be a local hardware problem. Another issue I had when on the VGA connection was data in the keyboard buffer at logon just after bootup - when typing in the user name to login at the prompt, it showed up spurios characters which had to be deleted before retyping. Once on the HDMI port...all appears ok (ish).

I agree with your sentiment regarding changes affecting [arguablky] older hardware.... chucking things out is not good on resources/environment...especially when they still perform quite well for most things but intensive gaming etc.

Darth just has problems with the 4.4.x series (and a bunch of other things that we won't get into... he's just bitter because his son chopped off his hand).

Your issue, if it is related to the kernel, was likely an unintentional regression. I highly doubt they just axed working code just to stop supporting older cards (at least, not in the middle of the support cycle for 4.4.x... maybe in a completely new version like 4.9, but there's been no word that I've seen on it). Hopefully someone will report it to them and they can fix it in a future point release of the 4.4.x series.

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It seems that kernel 4.4.19 has a problem with efi, after it updates in slackware 14.2 system cannot boot, it halts on loading init ramdisk. 4.4.20 has the same problem.

When go back to 4.4.14 everything goes fine. My weekly updates were working fine until 4.4.18.