Subject: Update Known Issues on Mir installation page?

From: Joseph Rushton Wakeling <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 09:20:34 +0200

Hello Mir people :-)

Is it possible to update the list of Known Issues on 
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Installing in light of the latest Mir/XMir code 
released?  These are given "as of 8/22/13" and you all have done a lot of work 
since then!

In particular what's written about the VT switching security bug 
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/xmir/+bug/1192843> is confusing.  You link to a 
branch <https://code.launchpad.net/~robertcarr/mir/client-focus-notifications> 
that has been merged, which might give the impression the bug has been fixed.

On the other hand the bug itself is reported as being fixed in Mir but not in 
XMir.  So, it would be nice to have a link to the branch where the XMir work is 
taking place.

The Known Issues listed also include fix-released issues such as multimonitor 
support and bypass composition.  So some update/clarification may be useful here 
too.

I should add that personally the VT switching security issue is the one that's 
stopping me from installing Mir (I have tried it out, albeit briefly, via a 
startup disk).

Thanks for all the hard work, and best wishes,

     -- Joe

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 09:34:20 +0800

Thanks Joe,

That's really an Ubuntu page which is not maintained by the Mir team.

We maintain: http://unity.ubuntu.com/mir/

However, of course we can and should fix the Ubuntu wiki where it needs 
fixing.

- Daniel

On 31/08/13 15:20, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/Installing in light of the latest Mir/XMir
> code released?  These are given "as of 8/22/13" and you all have done a
> lot of work since then!
>
> <https://bugs.launchpad.net/xmir/+bug/1192843> is confusing.  You link
> to a branch
> <https://code.launchpad.net/~robertcarr/mir/client-focus-notifications>
> On the other hand the bug itself is reported as being fixed in Mir but
> not in XMir.  So, it would be nice to have a link to the branch where
> the XMir work is taking place.
>
> The Known Issues listed also include fix-released issues such as
> multimonitor support and bypass composition.  So some
> update/clarification may be useful here too.
>
> I should add that personally the VT switching security issue is the one
> that's stopping me from installing Mir (I have tried it out, albeit
> briefly, via a startup disk).
>

---

From: Joseph Rushton Wakeling <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 15:10:29 +0200

On 03/09/13 03:34, Daniel van Vugt wrote:
> However, of course we can and should fix the Ubuntu wiki where it needs fixing.
>
> - Daniel

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for clarification and for updating the wiki page.  By coincidence today I 
decided to give Mir a spin, installing unity-system-compositor from universe: 
libmirserver1 is version 0.0.10+13.10.20130829.2-0ubuntu1.

This is on a ThinkPad T420, graphics:

     VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor 
Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
     Subsystem: Lenovo Device 21ce
     Kernel driver in use: i915

There's a lot of distortion around the mouse cursor, particularly when moving it 
slowly or when there is a heavy-ish load on the system.

Doing anything like playing a video (e.g. YouTube) seems to slow everything down 
a lot, the video is choppy and there is distortion elsewhere on the screen (e.g. 
while typing this email, there is distortion around the letters I'm typing as 
they appear).  Sometimes during a heavy system load the display will even 
freeze, although this doesn't appear to be a crash -- other things (such as 
audio playback) will continue, and the display unfreezes itself after a period 
of time (e.g. if a video ends).

Multi-monitor seems broadly OK although once when I Ctrl-Alt-Del'd to try and 
escape a frozen display, I wound up with both laptop and external screen active 
and was unable to reconfigure the system to use just the external display 
without a restart.

I'm not sure to what extent these are known issues and given how vague the 
report is I wasn't sure whether to turn this into a bug report or a report on 
the wiki page Jono Bacon set up:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir/GPUTesting

So, I thought I'd put it on record here -- let me know if you'd like it written 
up either on Launchpad or the wiki and I'll do so.

Thanks & best wishes,

        -- Joe

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 09:32:13 +0800

Joe,

The distortion around the mouse cursor is known:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/xmir/+bug/1218735

And the general skipping/freezing I think is covered by:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/xmir/+bug/1216472

Both bugs have workarounds you can try.

Those are significant bugs which confuse and mask each other. I don't 
think it would be useful to hypothesize about further display bugs until 
they're squashed and out of the equation.

- Daniel

On 03/09/13 21:10, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> Thanks for clarification and for updating the wiki page.  By coincidence
> today I decided to give Mir a spin, installing unity-system-compositor
> from universe: libmirserver1 is version 0.0.10+13.10.20130829.2-0ubuntu1.
>
>      VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core
> Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
> There's a lot of distortion around the mouse cursor, particularly when
> moving it slowly or when there is a heavy-ish load on the system.
>
> Doing anything like playing a video (e.g. YouTube) seems to slow
> everything down a lot, the video is choppy and there is distortion
> elsewhere on the screen (e.g. while typing this email, there is
> distortion around the letters I'm typing as they appear).  Sometimes
> during a heavy system load the display will even freeze, although this
> doesn't appear to be a crash -- other things (such as audio playback)
> will continue, and the display unfreezes itself after a period of time
> (e.g. if a video ends).
>
> Multi-monitor seems broadly OK although once when I Ctrl-Alt-Del'd to
> try and escape a frozen display, I wound up with both laptop and
> external screen active and was unable to reconfigure the system to use
> just the external display without a restart.
>
> I'm not sure to what extent these are known issues and given how vague
> the report is I wasn't sure whether to turn this into a bug report or a
> report on the wiki page Jono Bacon set up:
> So, I thought I'd put it on record here -- let me know if you'd like it
> written up either on Launchpad or the wiki and I'll do so.
>
> Thanks & best wishes,
>
>         -- Joe

---

From: Joseph Rushton Wakeling <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 13:27:27 +0200

On 04/09/13 03:32, Daniel van Vugt wrote:
> Those are significant bugs which confuse and mask each other. I don't think it
> would be useful to hypothesize about further display bugs until they're squashed
> and out of the equation.

Belated thanks for the info. :-)

Just as a "qualitative" report -- I don't want to speculate about particular 
bugs -- things got much better with Mir updates that arrived shortly after your 
last email.

The issue with video playback has become more subtle.  What seems to happen is 
that any video playback of any kind results in Compiz massively increasing its 
CPU usage, and that heightened CPU burden doesn't go away when the video has 
stopped -- it's less than when the video was playing, but not absent.

The effect is more strongly pronounced if e.g. the video is HTML5 video being 
played through a web browser, rather than a local file being played via mplayer 
-- but it's there in all cases.  System responsiveness as a whole decreases as a 
result.

I suspect this can also be interpreted in terms of existing bugs -- maybe even 
the ones you already pointed me to -- so don't worry about spending time 
responding to me or pointing me to bug reports.  I have strong trust in the Mir 
team to solve all the significant problems before release, this email is just an 
"FYI". :-)

But do let me know if this use of the mir-devel list is inappropriate -- I don't 
want to take up space and attention here if these kind of user experience 
reports can be better made elsewhere.

Thanks & best wishes,

     -- Joe

---

From: Daniel van Vugt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 09:38:26 +0800

Joe,

Feedback is appreciated. And mir-devel is relatively quiet so it's a 
good place, for now.

Compiz CPU usage is most certainly not related to Mir in any way. It 
generally trends with screen "damage" which is when any part of the 
screen changes. Compiz CPU is however significantly impacted by the 
relatively large and complex unityshell plugin that runs inside it. And 
unityshell does affect the damage calculations too. But still, that's 
all not related to Mir.

- Daniel

On 09/09/13 19:27, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
>> think it
> Just as a "qualitative" report -- I don't want to speculate about
> particular bugs -- things got much better with Mir updates that arrived
> shortly after your last email.
>
> The issue with video playback has become more subtle.  What seems to
> happen is that any video playback of any kind results in Compiz
> massively increasing its CPU usage, and that heightened CPU burden
> doesn't go away when the video has stopped -- it's less than when the
> video was playing, but not absent.
>
> The effect is more strongly pronounced if e.g. the video is HTML5 video
> being played through a web browser, rather than a local file being
> played via mplayer -- but it's there in all cases.  System
> responsiveness as a whole decreases as a result.
>
> I suspect this can also be interpreted in terms of existing bugs --
> maybe even the ones you already pointed me to -- so don't worry about
> spending time responding to me or pointing me to bug reports.  I have
> strong trust in the Mir team to solve all the significant problems
> before release, this email is just an "FYI". :-)
>
> But do let me know if this use of the mir-devel list is inappropriate --
> I don't want to take up space and attention here if these kind of user
> experience reports can be better made elsewhere.
>
> Thanks & best wishes,
>
>      -- Joe

---

From: Joseph Rushton Wakeling <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 09:13:46 +0200

On 10/09/13 03:38, Daniel van Vugt wrote:
> Compiz CPU usage is most certainly not related to Mir in any way. It generally
> trends with screen "damage" which is when any part of the screen changes. Compiz
> CPU is however significantly impacted by the relatively large and complex
> unityshell plugin that runs inside it. And unityshell does affect the damage
> calculations too. But still, that's all not related to Mir.

I'd assumed it was Mir/XMir related somewhere along the way simply because I 
wasn't getting the same extreme behaviour if I disabled unity-system-compositor 
and went back to pure X.

But whatever the cause, updates in the last 24 hours seem to have greatly 
reduced or maybe even eliminated the problem.  Which is nice. :-)