Quick side note for others who might in this context see a notification that âdomain disp-mgmt-bla already exists with uuid âŚâ. @marmarekposted in a qubes-issue comment how to fix this:
Iâm tracking kernel-latest, as the stable kernel did not solve issues
for me.
I had disappointing response to my request for information from users.
I have reverted my system to vanilla out of the box settings, and scaled
down my qube use.
I still see hard crash, and freezes (sometimes recovered), in normal
use, particularly during updates or qube start/stop.
I also see arbitrary reaping of running qubes.
There are two obvious areas which could impact - I/O and memory. I
suspect memory reallocations between qubes.
(As I have said before, I have swapped in 4.0 on an identical SSD, and
see none of these issues with aggressive memory allocation to qubes.)
FWIW, after spending quite a bit of time trying to solve graphical issues I had, I found that there were quite a few issues/posts scattered around reporting crashes with intel /i915 that in hindisght seem closely related or even downright duplicates.
So far: issues # 4782, 7507, 7664, 7902, 7894. Forum post. Blog post (+ I remember reading another two but havenât written down their urls).
The issue is that thereâs tearing/glitches/artifacts/corruption with the fb driver when thereâs no compositing (which i3wm doesnât provide - probably explaining the high proportion of reports from i3wm users). People then switch to the intel driver because thatâs the solution mentioned in posts to fix those glitches - but for some (yet to be found) reason intel is unstable for some people - from oopses to hard freeze/reboot.
In my case Iâd get a few random reboots a day. I eventually made the connection and reverted to fb and so far havenât encountered a single crash. In hindsight, given all the problems reported in this thread, Iâm wondering which proportion is due to people using the intel driver instead of fb and being hit by bugs in intelâŚ
Seems to happen for me on Qubes Updates; never during a Dom0 update â had hoped those recent updates were addressing this. Oddly, and Iâm not certain this is related, the crashes only occur for me when the laptop (Librem 14) is running on battery.
Iâve never changed anything regarding the graphics and do see occasional tearing. Mostly when using the laptop screen at 60Hz and almost never when using the external 4K screen at 30Hz. And mostly in XTerm windows. In any case I do see freezes and from your summary I conclude that I am using âfbâ (default).
Ok @taradiddles this has been interesting. Iâm one of the i3wm users and I can force an instant crash/reboot just by converting a window to floating and move it between my monitors. I have also been using the âintelâ fix to sort out some screen artifacts for months now. So I removed that fix and restarted, then attempted my crash and burn experiment⌠and whaddya know⌠no crash, no reboot!
Youâve certainly made things look up for me, thanks mate. Iâll continue to monitor this for now.
Goot to read that ! Youâre back to tearing issues then (better than crashes ). Installing a compositing manager should fix them, until someone finds why fbdev has those issues without compositing.
i3wmâs faq mentions using compton as a compositing manager. (itâs an old faq, maybe thereâs something more recent). Do you think you could give it a try it if you have some time and report back ? (no worries if you canât). Iâm updating the intel gfx troubleshooting community doc and this would definitely help other i3wm users.
@taradiddles Iâve not been a fan of installing software in dom0 so have avoided throwing a compositing package in there. Is there a stable, trustworthy version of compton even out there? I know itâs been forked several times, so you knowâŚ
@qub411Ah, I thought it would as simple as qubes-dom0-update compton
Given that i3wm are usually Qubes OS power users maybe someone in the Qubes team would volunteer to build/provide a package.
(Pinging @Demi to see if thereâs such interest).
[edit - I see that fedora32 packages picom and compton - I now understand that you prefer not to install additional packages - itâs not about building then installing in dom0 like I originally thought]
Otherwise weâd have to wait until the issue with fbdev is fixed but I have no idea how high it is in the devsâ priorities.
I had that option enabled yesterday too and didnât encounter a crash for 8+ hours - but it could just be luck. However my laptop then froze on suspend and I had to hard reset it - something I never encountered with fbdev.
If anyone does more tests and/or encounters issues please write (or PM) so that I can update the intel gfx troubleshooting doc accordinglyâŚ
Because if I am understanding you correctly, you suggest that this fix put more pressure on intel CPU with graphics processing, which the old thinkpad x220 CPU has troubles with and freezes.
So, I wonder if using Awesome or DWM wouldnât require that âfixâ and thus would result in no-freezes.
This is nice to hear, but without that âintelâ fix, you should be seeing graphical artefacts and tears on the screen. Do you see those? If so, do you think using AwesomeWM or DWM instead of i3wm result in no-tears/graphical glithces, but yet still a low-resource tiling manager use with Qubes?
AFAIK neither AwesomeWM nor DWM provide compositing so like i3wm youâd need to install a compositing manager. But more importantly, I donât think AwesomeWM / DWM are supported by Qubes OS - eg. you wonât see the qubesâ window colors/labels which is a no-go for most security-conscious users.
If you donât install a compositing manager and you experience tearing, then yes (but then thereâs a chance youâll be hit by bugs/crashes in intel). If you have compositing then fbdev is OK.
To summarize, those are the two workarounds:
fbdev (which is Qubesâ default) with compositing. i3wm users will have to install compton or picom (both are packaged in f32 so can be installed in dom0 as any other package). This should fix tearing (I have yet to read from a i3wm user with this fix - if you give it a try please send a PM or reply here).
intel with âUXAâ acceleration method instead of the the default, newer âSNAâ. âUXAâ fixes some crashes (like the one @qub411 had) but introduces others (eg. when suspending my T450s laptop). YMMV.
Because if I am understanding you correctly, you suggest that this fix put more pressure on intel CPU with graphics processing, which the old thinkpad x220 CPU has troubles with and freezes.
Itâs a software bug - overloading your x220 (CPU and/or GFX) should only make your laptop sluggish, not trigger a crash. FWIW Iâd expect the intel driver to be more efficient / less resource intensive than fbdev.
One point I would like to ask: I donât think I understand your point around âcompositing.â When I installed i3wm, I donât remember setting up a âcompositor.â Does it get installed by itself, as a dependency to i3wm?
AwesomeWM is supported by Qubes1. DWM is supported thanks to @3o14r4732
i3wm doesnât provide a compositor like xfce/gnome/kde do (to enable fancy effects), so youâll have to install a standalone compositing manager. An old i3wm faq mentions compton as compositing manager but thereâs also picom (the last fork in a long chain). It seems itâs only a matter of running the manager alongside i3wm (or awesomewm or dwm for that matter).
Sorry, Iâm not a i3wm user so I canât be of more help - I got hit by the same bugs as i3wm users because I had disabled compositing in xfce to decrease bloat a long time ago before an update introduced tearing.
Oh, I stand corrected ; Iâll add those WMs to the troubleshooting doc.