Ubuntu MATE 22.04 LTS Strange Display issues on Kernel 5.19 and 6

[MW0DCM-Dave]

Hi All,
I did put out a question a few days ago about this issue, but I seem to have hit a brickwall!
My Laptop is the HP Elitebook 8440p Intel® Core™ i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz. The issue I have is when I uupgrade to either Kernel 5.19 or the latest HWE kernel, where when I move the mouse either with the Touchpad or a USB mouse the screen goes dim, but a few seconds after I stop moving the pointer the screen goes bright, and also when typing the same happens, as when I stop the screen goes bright again.
I've since reinstalled 22.04LTS but have kept the Kernel version 5.15 on for the time being. Can anyone tell me what this issue is caused by? is it a MESA driver issue or a Kernel issue? I'm tearing what hair I have left on my head out trying to work this out.

The BIOS has no powersaving selectable, so it's not the same issue as the Dell Laptops had from a few years ago.

Many thanks in advance for any input, if all else fails I may report it as a Bug on the Kernel pages and see if someone there knows.

Update - Just after I made this thread the screen went black with a blinking cursor and wouldn't let me get to the Terminal, yet this is using 5.15 on 22.04LTS, I know if I revert back to 20.04.6LTS I have no issues whatsoever. I'm considering either downgrading to 20.04LTS or switching to another flavour of Ubuntu, something I don't really want to do.

Dave

[ricmarques]

Hi, @MW0DCM-Dave (David Maydew)

Regarding this part of the last paragraph of your post:

"(...) Update - Just after I made this thread the screen went black with a blinking cursor and wouldn't let me get to the Terminal, yet this is using 5.15 on 22.04LTS"

There are several reports, here in the Ubuntu MATE Community discussion forums, of computers that have an "Intel HD Graphics" card running Ubuntu MATE 22.04 LTS ("Jammy Jellyfish") where the graphical session "crashes" leading to a blank screen / black screen with a blinking cursor that then leads again to the Ubuntu MATE login screen. The good news is that in one of those discussions - Ubuntu Mate 22.04 auto ending Sessions when I do something specific - the user @esan_br (Elias Andrade), that has a "Dell Latitude E6410" with an "Intel HD Graphics" as its Graphics card, solved the issue that was happening to him (MATE crash that took him back to the login screen), in "Ubuntu MATE 22.04 LTS" ("Jammy Jellyfish") by:

1 - Creating a file "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf"

2 - Putting the following content in that file:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

3 - And then rebooting the computer.

Link to that post from @esan_br that he wrote on 1st October 2022:

Ubuntu Mate 22.04 auto ending Sessions when I do something specific

@Ygor6889, Igor, is your video card also from intel? I just solved the problem on the Latitude E6410. I created the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf file with the following content: $ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf Section "Device" Identifier "Intel Graphics" Driver "intel" Option "TearFree" "true" EndSection Then I restarted the system and Ubuntu Mate stopped crashing! I saw someone on this post reporting a similar problem: And then I followed what was in the 6.1 section of …

In that same discussion, the user @Ygor6889 (Ygor Oliveira Silva), that also has a computer with an "Intel HD Graphics" video card, says that @esanbr's solution worked for him as well:

Ubuntu Mate 22.04 auto ending Sessions when I do something specific

Thank you to everyone who tried to help me, @esan_br gave the solution, not only it did work but it completed fixed the issue Problem SOLVED! "Obrigado!"

So, @MW0DCM-Dave : if your computer also has an "Intel HD Graphics" card, it may be worth a shot to create that "/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf" file with the content that I mentioned above to see if that, at least, solves that most recent issue / problem that you got of getting a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I hope this helps

[MW0DCM-Dave]

Alas this "Workaround" didn't help. I've since tried Ubuntu Unity 22.04 with Kernel 6.2.0-33-generic and Ubuntu vanilla aka GNOME with the same kernel on 22.04.1 and the screen dimming when I move the pointer around the screen and then goes brighter within a second of none movement, the issue is also there when typing either in the terminal window or the the search on each menu hud, and on anything else that shows a text box, type and it dims then stop and it goes brighter.
To me, it seems r either the MESA driver for the older Intel HD GPU's has reached its EOL or something for changed in the later Kernel's 5.19 and 6+ has broken and either no one has noticed or those like myself are just running 5.15 and a version/flavour of 20.04LTS or 22.04LTS with the aforementioned Kernel.
I'm not too fussed about putting 20.04LTS back onto the HP Elitebook 8440p as I use Ubuntu Pro to keep the security patches etc going till 2030.

It's sadly put me off updating my 2 Plex servers to 22.04LTS for the time being, even though one of the machines run the Nvidia Quadro GPU, but the second server uses the Intel GPU on the i3 3240.

Is there any way I can report this issue to the Kernel Dev's just to highlight the issue? Or any of the Ubuntu flavour Dev's so it can be looked at?

Cheers for the help!

Dave

[ricmarques]

Hi again, @MW0DCM-Dave

You wrote:

@MW0DCM-Dave

Alas this "Workaround" didn't help. I've since tried Ubuntu Unity 22.04 with Kernel 6.2.0-33-generic and Ubuntu vanilla aka GNOME with the same kernel on 22.04.1 and the screen dimming when I move the pointer around the screen and then goes brighter within a second of none movement, the issue is also there when typing either in the terminal window or the the search on each menu hud, and on anything else that shows a text box, type and it dims then stop and it goes brighter(...).

As you say that the "variable" screen brightness / dimming issue you're experiencing also happens when using "regular" Ubuntu 22.04.1 with the GNOME Desktop environment, may I suggest checking, for that regular Ubuntu case (with GNOME), if "Automatic Brightness" is turned on and, if it is, try to turn it off and see if that solves the problem? You can find how to do that, for instance, in the following tutorial in the "It's FOSS" web site:

How to Turn Off Automatic Brightness on Ubuntu [Quick Tip]

Regarding Ubuntu MATE, as far as I know, there is no "Automatic Brightness" feature to turn "on" or "off". For Ubuntu MATE, I guess you can try disabling (uncheck) the "Dim display when idle" option - and/or, for the case of being "On Battery Power", you could (also) uncheck the option called "Reduce backlight brightness" - that are available by going to the Ubuntu MATE Menu and then choosing "Preferences" - > "Power Management" (which will open the "Power Management Preferences" window / dialog box):

Screenshot of the "On AC Power" tab of "Power Management Preferences":

Screenshot of the "On Battery Power" tab of "Power Management Preferences":

There are at least two posts here in the Ubuntu MATE Community may also be useful to you. The first post was written by @goinglinux (Larry Bushey) on May 2022:

GPD P2 Max 2022 brightness control

Welcome to the Ubuntu-MATE community forum @jimla. I don't have a GPD-pocket computer, but here is a suggestion that worked on my old HP laptop which had non-functioning brightness control buttons. I created two scripts, one to increase brightness and one to decrease brightness. I assigned each script to the appropriate key by creating a custom keyboard shortcut for each. (Instructions on creating custom keyboard shortcuts are here.) Here are the two scripts. Feel free to copy and customize the…

And the second post was written by @Philippe (on February 2023):

Notification area icon to set screen's brightness

Hello, Small script to add an icon in the notification area, to set the screen's brightness, by right clic. Usefull in specific situation. yad is required: sudo apt install yad #!/bin/bash # Script to add an icon in the notification area, # to set the screen's brightness, by right clic # Require yad : sudo apt install yad get_active_monitors() { xrandr | awk '/\ connected/ && /[[:digit:]]x[[:digit:]].*+/{print $1}' } # Name of the screen DisplayName=$(get_active_monitors) # set by d…

@MW0DCM-Dave: You've also asked:

@MW0DCM-Dave

Is there any way I can report this issue to the Kernel Dev's just to highlight the issue? Or any of the Ubuntu flavour Dev's so it can be looked at?

I'm guessing that the best you could do to report this specific / kind of issue is to follow the instructions available in the following "Kernel/Debugging/Backlight" web page in the "Ubuntu Wiki":

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Debugging/Backlight

I hope this helps. Please, keep us posted

[MW0DCM-Dave]

Good Morning!
First things first, it's the laptops I have aren't new, they're HP Elitebook 8440p that date back to 2013, they've only got the Intel GPU. I run Nvidia Prime on my media server, as I use the Nvidia Quadro GPU and Intel QuickSync with Plex server.
It's just these laptops that just don't like kernel 5.19 and 6+. I've tried other Ubuntu flavours of 22.04LTS and they all have the same symptoms after upgrading the kernel. I'll stick with 20.04LTS with Ubuntu Pro grabbing the updates etc till I've either solved the issue, or sadly got myself a new laptop after Christmas....

First time I've had any issues with Ubuntu in general since moving to Linux in 2009. Anyway, I'll keep looking....

Dave

[MW0DCM-Dave]

Hey all,
After some digging around the internet, I found this that admits that Backlight on offer Intel systems is broken, and it's still not fixed after 12 months+!

Kernel 6.1-rc# might break backlight control on old/weird laptops, please test

It also talks of a fix, but I've not gone into it yet, but it's a start, if any other Ubuntu MATE users have come across the same issue as I've got, don't despair

Dave

[Newhere]

[quote="MW0DCM-Dave, post:5, topic:26890"]
I have aren't new, they're HP Elitebook 8440p that date back to 2013 [/quote]

The Intel® Core™ i5-540M Processor 3M Cache, 2.53 GHz is from 2010 and is one of the first processors made for Windows 7 after the release in Autumn 2009. Your system is 13 years old.
I wouldn't necessarily expect that any kernel (unix, windows) can be upgraded for ever.
There is a reason why hardware should be changed after 10 years, otherwise stick to the last system that works.

[LRDP1]

Hello,
I think the problem actually comes from the graphic driver. I have one of my computers which is a Shuttle with I7 and pilot i915, and, for a few months, it did not work ; many crashes, impossible to cut/paste some datas...
I found this page
and put on /lib/firmware/i915 what was missing between the two pages.
Now it works like a rocket.