Kernel crash when using vblank_mode=glx on Intel Haswell GPU
Context
I run pure arch linux (see full system information below). My PC has run linux properly since 2012. However, a few months ago, it started crashing like this now and then. I have to force shutdown most of the time, although sometimes it auto reboots. Recently, I've had time for testing and I found out that playing a full screen video on brave browser and waiting for close to an hour was the only way to reproduce it half-reliably. I tried various things like - switching Xorg drivers between xf86-video-intel
and modesetting
. Having vulkan and not having vulkan. The issue happened across all the configurations.
The meat of it
I posted it to bbs.archlinux.org, and a user suggested I try without a compositor and with a different compositor. Sure enough, the issue didn't occur without a compositor. Then, I ran it with picom, with all possible relevant settings (cartesian product of backend=glx|xrender, vsync=true|false) as I was suggested to, and there was no issue. Almost positive then that it was an issue with xfwm4, I tried various configurations of /general/vblank_mode
in xfce4-settings-editor
. Setting vblank_mode
to off
or xpresent
alleviates the issue.
The issue therefore
Using vblank_mode=glx
(or auto) causes a crash on my system. It is a regression from few months ago (either due to a change in another program or in xfwm4).
Useful Information
- There are no useful logs, by anything. I have followed/watched journalctl,
sensors
,/sys/class/drm/card1/error
from an SSH session, to no avail. Everything perfectly normal. When the crash happens, ssh connection also gets booted, so its a full kernel crash. No information on the forced reboots' boot messages other than ext4 fixing itself. - This has not happened even once when I am doing other GPU work - screen recording, ffmpeg, OBS, etc,.
- I have tried all the arch wiki instructions (setting intel_iommu=off, etc,) to no avail.
System information
- Dell Optiplex 9020 AIO
- Intel i7-4770S with integrated Intel HD 4600 Graphics (Haswell GT2)
- 12 GB RAM (no swap, and never have more than 2-3gb in use typically)
- pacman -Q at the time of a crash
- about:gpu
-
journalctl for a boot that crashed
- Those prefixed with
startx
are the Xorg logs, I have it so Xorg logs to journald
- Those prefixed with