garbled screen contents for LibreOffice on Geode LX800 using xf86-video-geode 2.11.14

Submitted by Ada

Assigned to X.org Geode Mailing List

Link to original bug (#70730)

Description

This is not my first bugreport ever but probably my first on an X.org related project. Furthermore I am a user and chemist (I try to hack molecules not code ;) ) so please bear with me.

libs and progs used:

xf86-video-geode-2.11.14-r1 / 2.11.14 current main xorg-server package on my system is 1.13.4 Kernel different versions, between 3.9.x and 3.11.x (gentoo-sources, this should be basially a vanilla kernel with minimum patching) graphical console on or off doesn't seem to influence my problem

problem: Libreoffice (v 4.x.x) Writer gets garbled screen output when scrolling down. (and scrolling back up again brings same result) It seems only to affect writer not the other parts of LibO. Mainly it is black, a few times coloured. Actual content is unreadable. Other programs e.g. okular, kwrite pdf reader work fine, even things like zsnes do (yes, it actually run... ehm, walks on the geode). It might be related to writer itself but switching 2d accel on and off did not really seem to help, it was consistent through 4.x.x versions of LibO that I tried and it does not happen with xf86-video-vesa instead of xf86-video-geode. So I was tempted to blame it on the geode driver. :) Since it is gentoo I have to admit that everything is compiled (or compiled using chroot on the CF card in my big AMD quad core). (at least for packages that support custom cflags) CXX/CFLAGS="-march=geode -Os -mmmx -m3dnow -fno-align-jumps -fno-align-functions -fno-align-labels -fno-align-loops -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" xf86-video-geode is built without ztv support.

excerpt from xorg.conf

Section "Module" Load "dri" # probably doesn't really help that much, but I took the base config from an old VIA C3 machine End Section

...

Driver "geode"

Option "NoAccel" "false"
    Option "AccelMEthod" "EXA"

Option "NoCompression" "false"

    Option "SWCursor" "false"

Option "ExaScratch" "8388608" # ex 16777216

    Option "ExaScratch" "16777216"
   # both sizes didn't really show difference

Screen Section has DefaultDepth 24

Should I try with XAA or no accel at all (would be sad)?

In the BIOS I set 16 MB for the GPU.

other conditions: 24bpp at 1024x786 60Hz (an old iiyama TFT) attached to a FSC/FTC Futro A2xx (nice little device) bearing a TECO TR2350 with the latest BIOS I could obtain (Jun, 15th 2006 ?). Featuring Geode LX800 (500 MHz) incl. its companion graphics. Fam 5 Mdl 10 step 2 flags: fpu de pse tsc msr cx8 sep pge cmov clflush mmx mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow 00:01.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] CS5536 [Geode companion] Host Bridge (rev 31) 00:01.1 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Geode LX Video (if you need lspci -vv tell me)

XFCE4 DE (meta package is v 4.10). (I could also try e17 since it is installed on that box also. Plus I pulled in some of my favourite kde apps.) Everything else seems to work nicely, or at least I did not discover problems yet. qt-core is 4.8.4-r5 (was lower some days ago, but iirc. LibO is gtk based), gtk+:2 is 2.24.17 gtk+:3 is 3.4.4 (might have seen updates inbetween but problem was always the same) cairo is 1.12.14-r4.

If you need more config settings etc. just tell me and I'll try to find them. :) If you tell me how to dump portions of memory with standard tools during runtime I can try that also.

I also missed something like man geode with a summary of geode xorg.conf options. I think one can find it somewhere as a .bz2 file but it would be more convenient to have a "man geode" than searching your directory structure on the root fs for some hints.

If KMS is possible with this cute little chip it would be awesome. I think I saw it somewhere on the roadmap. (I know you are probably limited on time/manpower. And AMD officials probably care more for their recent chips and APUs at the moment (which I can also understand).)