Unresponsive animations and effects

[jherran]

Every time the system execute an animation or an effect, the window becomes irresponsible and can't use any other programs before animation stops. I meant, if I tried to close a window I use burn effect and I have to wait for 10 seconds until the window is closed to do any other thing. Looks like if there is running in a really old computer, and I'm running compiz-fusion on a core 2 duo with 2 Gb on an nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphics processor with 128MB of GDDR3 SDRAM using PCI Express.

With beryl all went really really fine, so I don't know where the problem can be located. I paste my xorg.conf, but I tryed lot of modification there without success.

[code:e813c]# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder3) Mon Feb 26 23:38:46 PST 2007

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf (xorg X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf(5) manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
# sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen" 0 0
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "MightyMouse" "AlwaysCore"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "es"
Option "XkbVariant" "mac"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "MightyMouse"
Driver "evdev"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Name" "Primax Electronics Apple Optical USB Mouse"
Option "HWHEELRelativeAxisButtons" "7 6"
Option "Buttons" "8"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "stylus"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "eraser"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "cursor"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/wacom"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync 28.0 - 96.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 60.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "NvAGP" "0"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
Option "RenderAccel" "True"
Option "DamageEvents" "True"
Option "UseEvents" "True"
Option "TripleBuffer" "True"
Option "backingstore" "True"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "DAMAGE" "Enable"
Option "RENDER" "Enable"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

[/code:e813c]

Any ideas?

Regards.

[Jupiter]

If you have changed some animation settings/timings, you can try and
rename your config and restart compiz. This will set default config
settings and see if you still have that problem. If problem is not in the
compiz settings, then you can try and change some of your Nvidia settings
one at a time to see if one of them is causing the problem. Namely settings
like DamageEvents, UseEvents, TripleBuffer, backingstore.

[jherran]

Hi,

I changed lot of things, but with a clean installation (after deleting all my config files) acts in the same way, i meant bad.

About my nvidia settings, i think that are completely ok, beryl works perfect before compiz-fusion, and after it. Games and other thing work fine too.

Any other ideas?

[kriko]

Do you notice high cpu usage when animations stutters? Does mouse becomes jerky a bit too?

[kriko]

I installed latest beryl version - and stuttering under load went away. So it is clearly compizfusion problem.

[jherran]

Do you notice high cpu usage when animations stutters? Does mouse becomes jerky a bit too?

Nop, both cpus are between 5-10%. I notice several things until I posted the message:

- When several animations runs at same time, the system does not respond during a few seconds.
- When I use the same animation 5-6 or more times, the system does not respond during a few seconds.
- If I use compiz-fusion a lot of time, the frozen periods appears more habitual.

Before and after the screen frozen, the cpus are at percentage I mentioned above and system continues working fine.

Regards

[kriko]

Please follow the output of:
[code:66f97]#sudo tail -f /var/log/messages[/code:66f97]
to see if you get some XID errors like when lock-up occurs.

[jherran]

Will follow. But for now:

[code:45bf9]$ sudo grep -i XID /var/log/messages
Password:
$
[/code:45bf9]

[Koppie]

Same problem here. Turning off Fading Windows helps a bit. The problem is definitely with the Animations plugin on Compiz-Fusion.

Edit: I think I've narrowed it down to Create #2 Animation (menus & tooltips). Whenever a tooltip appears the computer hangs for a couple seconds. It only seems to happen when the Fade animation is selected! In fact, if I select another animation, it looks like it does the other animation (eg. Glide 1) and then fade. Maybe that's the cause of the hang: a double fade? (And yes I have Fading Windows turned off!) Can someone else confirm this?

[jherran]

Same problem here. Turning off Fading Windows helps a bit. The problem is definitely with the Animations plugin on Compiz-Fusion.

Edit: I think I've narrowed it down to Create #2 Animation (menus & tooltips). Whenever a tooltip appears the computer hangs for a couple seconds. It only seems to happen when the Fade animation is selected! In fact, if I select another animation, it looks like it does the other animation (eg. Glide 1) and then fade. Maybe that's the cause of the hang: a double fade? (And yes I have Fading Windows turned off!) Can someone else confirm this?

Hi,

I don't think that there is the root cause of the problem, at least in my case. Seems the problem appears -for me- when there are a couple (or more) animations that must executed on the same time, but is completely random. Maximize and minimize windows, use alt+tab or supper+tab, moving windows, closing windows, when tooltips appears... can't figure out where the next hang will be.

Regards

[DeeZiD]

I have the same problem with the unresponsible Animation plugin.
Every other plugin works smooth though...

regards Dennis

[nilc]

I have the same problem. Every thing works smooth except the animation plug-in.
Any news? Do you still have problem with this?

[jherran]

Yes, the problem is still here.

[Xavarri]

I have this problem on 2 setups, one nVidia and one ATI (XGL). With animations enabled, I get random periods of unresponsiveness whenever a new window is created. Tooltips and Firefox URL autocomplete are the most annoying by far, but it happens randomly for any window.

[cornelius]

That's really weird. I've never seen that happen. Try restarting compiz the default settings (moving your ~/.compizconfig folder somewhere else).

BTW, can you open a bug report on [url=http://bugs.opencompositing.org/:299ec]bugtracker[/url:299ec] for this? It's there for this purpose, and it's easier for us to track bugs there than here. And while doing that please list your system specs, linux version, Xgl/Aiglx/Nvidia, etc. there. (Not here).

Thanks.

[jherran]

That's really weird. I've never seen that happen. Try restarting compiz the default settings (moving your ~/.compizconfig folder somewhere else).

Done without luck. I tried gconf backend and file backend too with the same results.

[quote:bb633]BTW, can you open a bug report on [url=http://bugs.opencompositing.org/:bb633]bugtracker[/url:bb633] for this? It's there for this purpose, and it's easier for us to track bugs there than here. And while doing that please list your system specs, linux version, Xgl/Aiglx/Nvidia, etc. there. (Not here).[/quote:bb633]

[url=http://bugs.opencompositing.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181:bb633]Done[/url:bb633].

[jherran]

I found a solution [url=http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=86253:4cd2f]here[/url:4cd2f].

For me, [url=http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?s=f56da69a22c9b81247f11bcee64fe176&p=1163489&postcount=4:4cd2f]this works[/url:4cd2f].

I can't understand why beryl and compiz works without problems with this option enabled and why compiz-fusion doesn't. But for now, I haven't got this problem on my computer.

I mark this thread as solved.

Regards,
Jose

[Koppie]

Wow, thanks! Worked for me too!

This used to be a problem with Beryl and eventually Beryl was able to fix it to the point where it would Just Work without any xorg.conf futzing. I hear the final release of Gutsy will finally have a gui editor for xorg.conf but still, this is really something that will prevent the average user from fully enjoying Compiz-Fusion. If we want to be able to compete with Windows, it needs to be easier than Windows. I assume this will be fixed in a future release.

In the mean time, I'll keep running and hacking and giving feedback. To all the developers: keep up the good work!

[nilc]

The solution doesn't work for me. And I don't have an nvidia card, maybe there exists some ati specific option for this.
Anyone with a ati card that got this to work?
Is this bug only for multiple screens?

[tiagobt]

Same problem here. Using Kubuntu + ATI (fglrx) + XGL. I tried disabling UseEvents in xorg.conf, but the problem prevailed. I know my graphic card is not very good (ATI Radeon X550), but the animation effects worked fine with Beryl.