Graphics glitch when booting Fedora 35 or 36 on Dell XPS notebook

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1

When I boot Fedora 35 on my Dell XPS 15 9575 2-in-1 the graphics start glitching after the grub menu. This happens on an actual installation of F35, but also when I just boot F35 from a fresh live USB thumb drive.

This does not happen when I boot anything else (e.g. Fedora 34 works just fine).

By graphics glitch I mean either a black screen or random lines on the screen. Every time the image on the screen would change (e.g. entering a character in the password field), the glitch changes visually (e.g. from black screen to horizontal lines or one big grey vertical bar than takes the upper third of the screen, …)

The glitch doesn’t prevent me from interacting with the device. I am still able to enter my disk decryption password and I can also log into gnome, start programs etc. It’s just a visual glitch.

The glitch only goes away once I close the notebook (causing it to go to sleep) and then opening it up again and pressing the power button to get it out of sleep again. This work around of course only works after booting, not while entering my disk decryption password.

Example of a glitch after booting the Fedora 35 ISO:

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Any ideas how I could fix this? I’ve updated the kernel a bunch of times now, but the issue doesn’t go away.

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dmesg (Fedora 35)

$ dmesg --level=emerg,alert,crit,err
[    1.948328] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun
[    5.087346] pcieport 0000:05:00.0: can't change power state from D3cold to D0 (config space inaccessible)
[  398.477761] PM: Some devices failed to suspend, or early wake event detected

Kernel (Fedora 35)

$ uname -a
Linux fedora 5.17.4-200.fc35.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Apr 20 15:37:53 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Edit:
This also happens when I boot the Fedora 36 beta ISO.

dmesg (Fedora 36)

$ dmesg --level=emerg,alert,crit,err
[    66.293864] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun
[    85.643204] hid-sensor-hub 001F:8086:0001.0005: timeout waiting response from ISHTP device
[    85.643204] hid-sensor-hub 001F:8086:0001.0004: timeout waiting response from ISHTP device

Kernel (Fedora 36)

$ uname -a
Linux fedora 5.17.0-0.rc7.116.fc36.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Mar 7 23:10:19 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Edit2:
For comparison, here’s what I get on Fedora 34 (where I don’t have any issues):

dmesg (Fedora 34)

$ dmesg --level=emerg,alert,crit,err

(Yes, no errors.)

Kernel (Fedora 34)

$ uname -a
Linux fedora 5.11.12-300.fc34.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Apr 7 16:31:13 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
2

That is not the kernel from the upcoming fedora 36 release. It is now 5.17.3 in the repo.

Do you also get the same when you boot using one of the earlier 5.16 kernels on F35?
If not then I suggest you look for a similar bug at bugzilla and if needed file a new bug against the 5.17 kernel and the i915 driver. Fedora 36 has once again been pushed back for release, currently scheduled for May 10.

3

Yes, it’s just the kernel that comes with the Fedora 36 Beta ISO as downloaded from the website. Since I’m just booting it live and not installing it there is no easy way for me to install to update the kernel. :grimacing:

I’ve been using Fedora 35 since mid December 2021, so I would assume so. I can’t really test it though I think because grub only holds the last 4(?) kernels and all of those are probably newer.
All I can say is that I’ve been having this issue ever since I installed Fedora 35 in December. :confused:

4

DNF by default retains the last 3 kernels. If you do not see the grub menu when booting you can hold down the shift key while booting and it should show the grub menu. You then can select the earlier kernel to boot from.

It seems really strange to me that you would wait 4 months to report such an irritating issue that seems to be related to your hardware and the graphics driver.

You can find some related posts concerning the i915 driver on this forum with a simple search in all posts for ‘i915’ and I know some bugs have been filed on that issue. You probably can similarly find some of the bugs on bugzilla.

5

Yes, I must admit that I was too lazy to properly report this before and was basically hoping that it would fix itself somehow over time with newer kernels…

Thanks, I will search through the bugs and see if I can find anything of of value.

This is the oldest kernel that was available in the grub menu for me and I’m having the same issue with that:

$ uname -a
Linux fedora 5.16.19-200.fc35.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Apr 8 15:34:44 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
6

You probably should post an update with your own issues into whatever related bug(s) you find.