Font Rendering Corruption Debian

[lxskllr]

The last few days I've had issues with my fonts. It's especially noticeable in Iceweasel, but it can turn up any place. For example, in the AT forum sidebar where the links are, the titles will sometimes be an unreadable mess, but mousing over them will straighten things out. With text that isn't a link, clicking and dragging over the text fixes it. It's seldom all of anything. Some links will be fine, and as will some regular text, but with the regular text, it seems to corrupt in sentence, and paragraph sized chunks. It's never sporadic.

I don't remember exactly when I noticed it, but I've narrowed it down to being the 9th of May to more recently. Looking over my update history, there's numerous updates that are at least somewhat related, and a ton of them, so I'm not sure exactly where to look. Here's the updates I got on the 9th, and this is close to when the problem started. Some of them look like they could be related...

Upgraded the following packages:
fontconfig (2.8.0-3.1) to 2.9.0-3
fontconfig-config (2.8.0-3.1) to 2.9.0-3
gir1.2-pango-1.0 (1.29.4-3+b1) to 1.30.0-1
libcairo-gobject2 (1.10.2-7) to 1.12.2-1
libcairo2 (1.10.2-7) to 1.12.2-1
libfontconfig1 (2.8.0-3.1) to 2.9.0-3
libglib2.0-cil (2.12.10-3) to 2.12.10-4
libgtk2.0-cil (2.12.10-3) to 2.12.10-4
libmjpegtools-2.0-0 (1:2.0.0-0.6) to 1:2.0.0-dmo1
libnewt0.52 (0.52.14-8) to 0.52.14-9
libpango1.0-0 (1.29.4-3+b1) to 1.30.0-1
libwxbase2.8-0 (2.8.12.1-7) to 2.8.12.1-9
libwxgtk2.8-0 (2.8.12.1-7) to 2.8.12.1-9
libx11-6 (2:1.4.4-4) to 2:1.4.99.901-2
libx11-data (2:1.4.4-4) to 2:1.4.99.901-2
libx11-dev (2:1.4.4-4) to 2:1.4.99.901-2
libx11-doc (2:1.4.4-4) to 2:1.4.99.901-2
libx11-xcb1 (2:1.4.4-4) to 2:1.4.99.901-2
libxi6 (2:1.4.5-1.1) to 2:1.6.0-1
libxinerama1 (2:1.1.1-3) to 2:1.1.2-1
libxkbfile1 (1:1.0.7-1) to 1:1.0.8-1
libxrender1 (1:0.9.6-2) to 1:0.9.7-1
libxres1 (2:1.0.5-1) to 2:1.0.6-1
libxss1 (1:1.2.1-2) to 1:1.2.2-1
libxtst6 (2:1.2.0-4) to 2:1.2.1-1
mjpegtools (1:2.0.0-0.6) to 1:2.0.0-dmo1
unoconv (0.4-1) to 0.5-1
whiptail (0.52.14-8) to 0.52.14-9

Here's my specs I think are relevant...

Nvidia 8800gt
Debian64 Testing
Xfce desktop compositing on, as is font hinting
Nouveau drivers

I also recently installed the game Xonotic, and have been playing that a bit. Maybe it could have set a graphics option, and not returned it?

Any ideas for pointing me in the right direction?

 

[lxskllr]

Ok, I "fixed" it by installing the proprietary drivers. Not my favorite solution, but after a bit of panic when x didn't start, and some quality time with tty and elinks, it's all running :^D

I'd prefer using the free drivers, and I'll probably spend some time with it later trying to figure it it. I've had too much excitement tonight to hassle with it :^D

 

[weovpac]

Just a friendly reminder, Debian testing is a moving target. What you are seeing is an X/libcairo2 issue. I have been lucky, since I have not been affect by this. I use nouveau and have no issues.

You can take a look here about ongoing transitions:
http://release.debian.org/transitions/

And BTS is a great resource, most of the time, I think this is your issue:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=658252

You can try manually downgrading libcairo2 to an earlier version[might need older depends for libcairo2, but 'dpkg -i' will tell you if you need something else]. You can find it here:
http://snapshot.debian.org/

Good luck and post your results, if you try anything new.

 

[lxskllr]

I checked out the BTS, but I wasn't sure how to use it. It seemed to require knowledge to search I didn't have. What I wanted to do was scan all bugs starting on a certain date, and see if anything jumped out at me. Is that possible?

How did you come up with libcairo2 as being a possible cause, you just knew? My package list above included a lot of X related stuff, so I /thought/ that was where a potential problem was, but I really had no idea.

Finally, is it /really/ libcairo2? If it works with proprietary drivers, wouldn't that indicate an issue with the free drivers?

 

[weovpac]

I checked out the BTS, but I wasn't sure how to use it. It seemed to require knowledge to search I didn't have. What I wanted to do was scan all bugs starting on a certain date, and see if anything jumped out at me. Is that possible?

AFAIK, that is not possible.

How did you come up with libcairo2 as being a possible cause, you just knew? My package list above included a lot of X related stuff, so I /thought/ that was where a potential problem was, but I really had no idea.

I saw your list of upgraded packages and put it together. Mind you, I saw complaints from other users in #debian-next on irc.oftc.net.

Also if something is not working correctly and you updated recently. If you don't remember or to refresh your memory, check /var/log/aptitude /var/log/apt/history.log /var/log/dpkg.log for a list of what was upgraded and checking BTS for reports on those packages. You can use surfraw[my prefered method, can also be used for a lot more] for this instead of using the BTS web interface. After setting up surfraw doing a search opens your browser searching[in this case BTS].

 $ sr debbugs foo

*NOTE: sr is a shortcut for surfraw.

Finally, is it /really/ libcairo2? If it works with proprietary drivers, wouldn't that indicate an issue with the free drivers?

From reading that bug report and reports from others in #debian-next, it seems like a combinations of things. Like for me I have no issues[knock on wood 😉]. It seems like everything works with some cards and not with others. FWIW, it also affects ATI cards.

The only way to really know if that is your issue, is to get rid of the nvidia driver completely. Use an old version of libcairo2 from s.d.o and reinstall nouveau and test. This is what I read that worked for some.

Good luck and report back, please; I'm curious now and remember you are using Testing 😉

 

[lxskllr]

Also if something is not working correctly and you updated recently. If you don't remember or to refresh your memory, check /var/log/aptitude /var/log/apt/history.log /var/log/dpkg.log for a list of what was upgraded and checking BTS for reports on those packages. You can use surfraw[my prefered method, can also be used for a lot more] for this instead of using the BTS web interface. After setting up surfraw doing a search opens your browser searching[in this case BTS].

 $ sr debbugs foo

*NOTE: sr is a shortcut for surfraw.

It looks like DuckDuckGo has an !bang for Debian bugs. !dbugs foo will pull up bugs relating to that package. You should try DDG. It's the search of the future :^)

The only way to really know if that is your issue, is to get rid of the nvidia driver completely. Use an old version of libcairo2 from s.d.o and reinstall nouveau and test. This is what I read that worked for some.

Good luck and report back, please; I'm curious now and remember you are using Testing 😉

But I'm skeered! :^D

I'm leery of fooling with it now that it's working, but I have a hard time leaving well enough alone. My issue is being left with only a console. I'm really bad about remembering text commands, and their syntax. I'm very visually oriented, and find myself DuckDuckGoing even simple things to make sure I get it right. As an example...

was it
#apt get upgrade?
#upgrade get apt?
#apt-get update?
...
DuckDuckGo...
Ah! apt-get upgrade!

Now that's kind of a dumb example, and one that I actually remember, but that's my life on cli :^D I just don't have the head for it I guess. If I don't do something all the time, it doesn't stick with me. In a gui, I can remember the location in reference to other things it was close to. Even if I only saw it once, I can get back with a little trial and error.

 

[Nothinman]

If you haven't yet, install apt-listbugs. It's not a panacea, but it will help you catch big bugs before you upgrade.

Sadly, libcairo seems to have had some major issues recently. I'm running sid and tab switching, creating, etc performance in Chrome is shit right now because of an issue with libcairo and the non-free nVidia driver. Supposedly there's a fix in a newer driver, but it either hasn't hit sid yet or it didn't really fix the issue.

 

[weovpac]

It looks like DuckDuckGo has an !bang for Debian bugs. !dbugs foo will pull up bugs relating to that package. You should try DDG. It's the search of the future :^)

Yes, DuckDuckGo is my default search engine. But I forget sometimes about !bang and new !bangs added; I'm also used to using the terminal for most tasks. Thanks good to know that DDG has !debbug 🙂

I can understand not wanting to mess when things are working. But sometimes when using Testing, only thing to do is test things out and report bugs etc... That is part of using Testing 😉

But anyways, if you are comfortable using a text based browser, can still use DDG when needed. I just tried with w3m and !debbug works with no javascript. w3m and w3m-img packages come in handy when X is not available or not working.

Also the debian-reference meta-package or just debian-reference-[language] is good to have around in case of debian/linux related questions. And debian-handbook which was just released recently.

 

[weovpac]

If you haven't yet, install apt-listbugs. It's not a panacea, but it will help you catch big bugs before you upgrade.

Indeed apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges are a must for testing/sid, IMHO.

 

[lxskllr]

Indeed apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges are a must for testing/sid, IMHO.

I have both of those installed, but I don't think I've gotten any reports recently; none that stopped installation anyhow. Are there bugs to view in a log that maybe weren't considered significant enough to stop installation, but are listed?

 

[weovpac]

Timing is everything with testing/sid. When one does an upgrade and no one has yet to report a bug. The person at the time of the upgrade will not receive any message/list from apt-listbugs. IIRC, should only get a message/list of critical bugs before each apt upgrade/installation[maybe for important severity also, but I'm not sure]. So any other severity should not trigger apt-listbugs.