Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Jason Briggs]

Dear Maintainer:

I need to advise you that the current package in Stretch xserver-xorg-video-qxl 
0.1.4-3+b1 is
***NOT*** fixed

on my Stretch I manually recompile xserver-xorg-video-qxl and applied the 
following patch:

http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/xorg-x11-drv-qxl.git/plain/no-surfaces-kms.patch

using this patch on the recompile package, the issue no longer happens (when 
kms enabled).

To be specific, with this patch enabled, even though Xorg.0.log report that 
surfaces enabled,
they behave as if disable and all works. This is the same behavior I can see 
when I ran a Fedora;
log say enabled but no issue, because in fact disable internally.

I advise please apply the patch above to package (if there is no other patch in 
works).
This can't be in the next Debian.

In addition I advise to check other patches listed:
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/xorg-x11-drv-qxl.git/tree/
to see if they fix anything else, such as qxl-kms-disable-composite.patch
I can confirm there is other issues with QXL driver (other than this bug) with 
4.x+ kernel such as broken auto-resizing ("Auto Resize VM with Window" broken).

Thank you

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Jason Briggs]

I need to add some information. Here is a link to a thread to Jessie downstream 
distro suffering from issue: https://forums.whonix.org/t/qxl-slowness-fix/1759

Fedora has some patches applied to QXL and maybe they would help:
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/xorg-x11-drv-qxl.git/tree/
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/xorg-x11-drv-qxl.git/tree/no-surfaces-kms.patch
 <- this one is interesting!!!
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/xorg-x11-drv-qxl.git/tree/qxl-kms-disable-composite.patch
 <- maybe of value
http://pkgs.fedoraproject.org/cgit/rpms/xorg-x11-drv-qxl.git/tree/0001-worst-hack-of-all-time-to-qxl-driver.patch
 <- if all else fails

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Laurent Bigonville]

On Mon, 05 Oct 2015 22:58:26 -0400 Pat Roberts 
 wrote:


> Dear Maintainer,

Hi,

> When QXL video is selected in a virt-manager Debian Jessie or Wheezy 
guest, the
> performance of a whole class of applications is so bad it renders the 
driver

> unusable, up to appearing locked up.

Could you please try to use the version from testing/unstable (0.1.4)?

Cheers,

Laurent Bigonville

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Jason Briggs]

WORKAROUND (finally!!!):

sudo editor /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-qxl.conf
# insert the following:
Section "Device"
  Identifier "qxl"
  Driver "qxl"
  Option "ENABLE_SURFACES" "False"
EndSection
# save + reboot with QXL video

This was suggested on a mailing list for a downstream Jessie distro, thanks to 
those guys. The original reference: 
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/spice-devel/2012-November/011479.html

I don't know if this is a real solution (strange that xserver-xspice is 
missing) but with this fix Iceweasel and apps now seem to run at full speed in 
my Jessie VM.

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Jason Briggs]

I wonder if these issues and lack of configurability aren't related to the
fact that xserver-xspice package (part of QXL source) appears to be 
missing from Jessie altogether??
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/xserver-xspice

Another note: I've found this affects other Jessie-based distros
as well.

ps: sorry for line length

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Jason Briggs]

Minor correction:
I used the Cirrus driver on Wheezy machines. For Jessie machines I have it set 
to the VGA driver (because Cirrus has issues on Jessie guests as well). 

I had no luck trying to backport the xserver-xorg-video-qxl package from Sid 
locally on my own (green screen) and limited ability to look further.

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Jason Briggs]

Another way to replicate:

Simply run the Jessie live CD (debian-live-8.2.0-amd64-xfce-desktop.iso) as a 
guest in Virt-Manager with QXL driver (default) and try to load Iceweasel and 
try to scroll through some websites for 10 minutes. Even with spice-vdagent 
missing, with only the qxl driver the browser is so slow and glitchy it's 
virtually unusable on my host systems.

Then kill machine and switch to VGA driver, reload VM and try Iceweasel again. 
VGA appears slower in XFCE at first but then Iceweasel runs great and speed is 
constant in general.

Again there is no spice-vdagent in the live CD so obviously the qxl driver is 
the problem.

Bug#801081: xserver-xorg-video-qxl: QXL video unusable due to performance

[Pat Roberts]

Package: xserver-xorg-video-qxl
Version: 0.1.1-2+b1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

When QXL video is selected in a virt-manager Debian Jessie or Wheezy guest, the
performance of a whole class of applications is so bad it renders the driver
unusable, up to appearing locked up.

The most obvious is any browser based on late Iceweasel, Firefox, XChat, and
others. The apps will load but as soon as scrolling through elements the
performance will slow to a crawl and completely unusable. There are artifacts
all throughout the windows and sometimes strange broken resizing which
sometimes crashed my client.

This is happening from Debian Jessie host, Fedora 22 host with Debian guests. I
am forced to switch to Cirrus video driver for all Debian guests, but one of my
guests only supports the QXL driver thus I cannot use that guest. With the
Cirrus driver there are no special problems with Iceweasel/Firefox/other.

I have tried setting the following in the VM definition files:
   
 
  
  
  
  
   
My intuition was that "streaming mode off" should have fixed it, because from
the visuals it looks as if spice/QXL is trying to compress the browser window,
but spice/QXL in the guest appears to ignore these settings (though it is
passed to qemu on the command line). No effect.

There is a Fedora bug which sounds very similar and using a similar version of
QXL as found in Debian Jessie:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1020393

This can be reproduced by installing a Debian Jessie guest with XFCE or KDE in
virt-manager, installing Iceweasel from jessie-backports
(http://mozilla.debian.net/), making a web search on a heavily loaded page, and
trying to scroll. Also installing XChat inside KDE the menus are unbrowsable.

Host CPUs are fast intels with 8GB ram+.

I would love to be able to simply disable spice compression/streaming
completely but the driver appears to ignore the settings above.




-- Package-specific info:
X server symlink status:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 May 15 17:51 /etc/X11/X -> /usr/bin/Xorg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2401376 Feb 10  2015 /usr/bin/Xorg

VGA-compatible devices on PCI bus:
--
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Broadwell-U 
Integrated Graphics [8086:1616] (rev 09)

/etc/X11/xorg.conf does not exist.

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d does not exist.

/etc/modprobe.d contains no KMS configuration files.

Kernel version (/proc/version):
---
Linux version 3.16.0-4-amd64 (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 
4.8.4 (Debian 4.8.4-1) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19)

Xorg X server log files on system:
--
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 25794 Oct  5 21:21 /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Contents of most recent Xorg X server log file (/var/log/Xorg.0.log):
-
[13.210] 
X.Org X Server 1.16.4
Release Date: 2014-12-20
[13.210] X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
[13.210] Build Operating System: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 x86_64 Debian
[13.210] Current Operating System: Linux ace 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 
3.16.7-ckt11-1+deb8u4 (2015-09-19) x86_64
[13.210] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.16.0-4-amd64 
root=/dev/mapper/debian--vg-root ro apparmor=1 security=apparmor quiet
[13.210] Build Date: 11 February 2015  12:32:02AM
[13.210] xorg-server 2:1.16.4-1 (http://www.debian.org/support) 
[13.210] Current version of pixman: 0.32.6
[13.210]Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
[13.210] Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
(++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[13.210] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Mon Oct  5 21:21:36 
2015
[13.212] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
[13.214] (==) No Layout section.  Using the first Screen section.
[13.214] (==) No screen section available. Using defaults.
[13.214] (**) |-->Screen "Default Screen Section" (0)
[13.214] (**) |   |-->Monitor ""
[13.215] (==) No monitor specified for screen "Default Screen Section".
Using a default monitor configuration.
[13.215] (==) Automatically adding devices
[13.215] (==) Automatically enabling devices
[13.215] (==) Automatically adding GPU devices
[13.219] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic" does not exist.
[13.219]Entry deleted from font path.
[13.224] (==) FontPath set to:
/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,
/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,
/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,
/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,
/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,
/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,
built-ins
[13.224] (==)