Bug#1014625: xterm: screen corruption of scrollback buffer
Package: xterm
Version: 372-1
Severity: normal
I'm getting screen corruption (scattered blocks of blackness) over
text in the xterm display when scrolling back. The blocks move with
the contents of the scrollback when scrolling. When that text is
eventually scrolled off the screen, scrolling back may induce a
different corruption pattern. Forcing a redisplay of the contents of
the terminal by going to a different virtual desktop and back will get
rid of the corruption.
This has happened ever since I changed my hardware -- mostly updating
my video card to a radeon RX570 -- necessitating new versions of some
drivers and kernel. While I would happily accept that the video card
might have some dodgy memory (note to self: find a GPU memory stress
tester), this corruption has not affected any other program other than
xterm's scrollback buffer, so I wonder if it's a bug instead.
Screengrabs of the symptom:
https://rather.puzzling.org/~tconnors/tmp/screengrab-xterm-scrollback-corruption.png
https://rather.puzzling.org/~tconnors/tmp/screengrab-xterm-scrollback-corruption2.png
radeon amdgpu drivers and firmware are the latest version allowed by
otherwise being on debian stable - ie,
firmware-amd-graphics/unstable=20210818-1
xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu/stable=19.1.0-2 (backporting requires upgrading libc)
kernel is bullseye-backports = 5.18.2-1~bpo11+1
Both xterm/stable and a backported xterm/unstable exhibit the same symptoms.
Video card is:
02:00.0 0300: 1002:67df (rev ef) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590] (rev ef) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: ASRock Incorporation Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590]
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.3
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable'), (5, 'testing'), (2, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 5.16.0-0.bpo.4-amd64 (SMP w/20 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages xterm depends on:
ii libc6 2.31-13+deb11u3
ii libfontconfig1 2.13.1-4.2
ii libfreetype6 2.10.4+dfsg-1
ii libice6 2:1.0.10-1
ii libtinfo6 6.2+20201114-2
ii libutempter0 1.2.1-2
ii libx11-6 2:1.7.2-1
ii libxaw7 2:1.0.13-1.1
ii libxext6 2:1.3.3-1.1
ii libxft2 2.3.2-2
ii libxinerama1 2:1.1.4-2
ii libxmu6 2:1.1.2-2+b3
ii libxpm4 1:3.5.12-1
ii libxt6 1:1.2.0-1
ii xbitmaps 1.1.1-2.1
Versions of packages xterm recommends:
ii x11-utils 7.7+5
Versions of packages xterm suggests:
pn xfonts-cyrillic <none>
-- no debconf information
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