i915 driver problems

[Bernhard]

Hello, I wonder if some of you guys have the bad luck of an i915
graphics card and found some solutions. For me, no >= 5.4 xen kernel
works (freezes). So I still run it on 4.19 :)

I first thought this to be an "evolution problem" since I use and update
Q4 since its beta state. So I tried a new install on a new disc, but
that fails even before finishing install, freezing as well :-(

Even a plain "live debian" freezes from time to time with i915 errors,
which gives a clue where the problem comes from.

Is there maybe a way to tweak the installer? Thanks,

best, Bernhard

[Sven Semmler]

I do have freezes and crashes with the 5.4 kernel and have to use 4.19 consequently. But I don't know what causes it. How did you determine that it's the i915 driver in your case?

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[Bernhard]

On 9/1/21 3:11 PM, Sven Semmler wrote:
> I do have freezes and crashes with the 5.4 kernel and have to use 4.19
> consequently. But I don't know what causes it. How did you determine
> that it's the i915 driver in your case?
>

Sad for you, but I am kind of happy that I am not alone :) Maybe you add
your experience to my bug report

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/6397

as well? Sometimes I need a vanilla debian (life system on usb) to
uefi-debug / emergencybackup. And even that one hangs from time to time,
by spitting out a last word

[drm:intel_cpu_fifo_underrun_irq_handler [i915]] ERROR CPU pipe A FIFO
underrun

Since the std debian is very stable and much less complex than xen +
qubes, I take that as a hint (badly enough, when qubes freezes happen,
qubes dies faster than kernel logs are written, so I have no other
starting point anyways).

For these reasons, my suspicion was early on the i915 driver. Also, i915
seems known problematic from 5.x kernels onwards any kind of other
linuxes (google it).

cheers, Bernhard


P.S: my chipset is an intel 620 [8086:5917] rev 07.

[Mike Keehan]

Hi Bernard,

I think it is the recent i915 driver update that causes the problem.
I had to remove it and download and install the previous version.
then I blacklisted the i915 driver so that dom0 would not update it.

Screen does not freeze anymore.

Only "problem" is that the "Qubes Update" widget thinks there is
always an update to be made. Just have to ignore it.

Mike.

[haaber]

On 9/1/21 7:44 PM, Mike Keehan wrote:
> On 9/1/21 1:36 PM, Bernhard wrote:
>> Hello, I wonder if some of you guys have the bad luck of an i915
>> graphics card and found some solutions.  For me, no >= 5.4 xen kernel
>> works (freezes). So I still run it on 4.19 :)
>

> I think it is the recent i915 driver update that causes the problem.
> I had to remove it and download and install the previous version.
> then I blacklisted the i915 driver so that dom0 would not update it.
>
> Screen does not freeze anymore.
>
> Only "problem" is that the "Qubes Update" widget thinks there is
> always an update to be made.  Just have to ignore it.
>
> Mike.
>

Sound worth a trial (easily reversible, right?) Which version did you
install? And how find out the version of firmware installed? Thx, Bernhard

[Peter Palensky]

Sound like my problem: kernels above 5.4.88 freeze/crash. Would be great if we could isolate the troublemaker and fix the problem.

@Bernhard:

You can check driver and firmware version with:

[root@dom0]# modinfo i915  

@Mike:

Do you simply use working (i.e. old) driver/fw binaries with a recent kernel, or did you patch/install from source?

Peter

[Mike Keehan]

I downloaded the 4.0 Qubes iso and extracted the driver from there, as I
knew it had always worked until the update.

I think there is a way to see what updates Qubes has performed, but I
can't remember how.

The current Intel driver, which does not work for me, is
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-48.20200205.fc33.x86_64.rpm
Just use dnf to uninstall it.

The one I installed using dnf is
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-32.20171025.fc33.x86_64.rpm
and this does work OK.

If you don't blacklist the driver in dnf, it will update it next
time you update dom0.


Mike.

[haaber]

On 9/1/21 10:54 PM, Mike Keehan wrote:
> On 9/1/21 8:29 PM, haaber wrote:
>> On 9/1/21 7:44 PM, Mike Keehan wrote:
>>> On 9/1/21 1:36 PM, Bernhard wrote:
>>>> Hello, I wonder if some of you guys have the bad luck of an i915
>>>> graphics card and found some solutions.  For me, no >= 5.4 xen kernel
>>>> works (freezes). So I still run it on 4.19 :)
>>>
>>> I think it is the recent i915 driver update that causes the problem.
>>> I had to remove it and download and install the previous version.
>>> then I blacklisted the i915 driver so that dom0 would not update it.

>

> I downloaded the 4.0 Qubes iso and extracted the driver from there, as I
> knew it had always worked until the update.
>
> I think there is a way to see what updates Qubes has performed, but I
> can't remember how.
>
> The current Intel driver, which does not work for me, is
> xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-48.20200205.fc33.x86_64.rpm
> Just use dnf to uninstall it.
>
> The one I installed using dnf is
> xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-32.20171025.fc33.x86_64.rpm
> and this does work OK.
>
> If you don't blacklist the driver in dnf, it will update it next
> time you update dom0.

Wicked! That is very smart, thank you for the lesson! I am fighting
since 7 months with it without having had that simple & brilliant idea
:-) best, Bernhard

[haaber]

>
> The current Intel driver, which does not work for me, is
> xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-48.20200205.fc33.x86_64.rpm
> Just use dnf to uninstall it.

actually Q4.0.4 ships with

xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-49.20210126.fc25.x86_64.rpm

which does not work for me either.

>
> The one I installed using dnf is
> xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-32.20171025.fc33.x86_64.rpm
> and this does work OK.

this one is from Q4.0.1, qhereas Q4.0.0 ships

xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-26.20160929.fc25.x86_64.rpm


So you confirm that you install it in dom0 via

sudo dnf install xorg..whatever.rpm

(that requires deleting kernel-latest-qubes-vm, if present). Then you
need to do an update-grub or something similar to build the downgraded
version in the respective initramfs ???

Bernhard

[Mike Keehan]

Hi Bernard,

I just looked at my history in bash, and what I did was :-

dnf downgrade xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-32.20171025
vi /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
Appended "exclude=xorg-x11-drv-intel" as the last line in the file.

Mike.

[Mike Keehan]

Hmm, looking through the history list, there was a "yum downgrade" line
after the dnf one. Might be that the "dnf downgrade" did not work.

yum downgrade xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-32.20171025.fc25.x86_64.rpm

that is the full filename of the rpm file.

Mike.