18 ms·

Intel Laptop Users Should Avoid Linux 5.19.12 to Avoid Damaging the Display

350 points by electricant 4y ago

mrmckizzle 4y ago
https://xkcd.com/1328/ https://xkcd.com/1328/
capableweb 4y ago
Intel GPU Users Judging by https://community.frame.work/t/psa-dont-upgrade-to-linux-kernel-5-19-12-arch1-1/23171/66 https://community.frame.work/t/psa-dont-upgrade-to-linux-ker..., it has been solved in 5.9.13 already. Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2022: > 5.19.13 is now released with 8 reverts for this driver, hopefully that sould [sic] resolve this issue. thanks, greg k-h https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzxDIXMPIWqsELmj@kroah.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzxDIXMPIWqsELmj@kroah.com/
- stop50 4y ago
  I had this error. 13 fixed it.
  - ronjouch 4y ago
    > "I had this error." Does that mean you experienced the "potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel" ? If so, was your LCD panel harmed?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - makeworld 4y ago
      My display was not damaged. Switched back to an older kernel version and it was fine.
      - snapplebobapple 4y ago
        Same here, updated my framework laptop, rebooted to blinky screen, turned it off, did some research, loaded up a livecd to revert the kernel and then updated when 5.19.13 made it into arch. Thankfully just a pain in my butt not a dead lcd for me.
        dhruvmittal 4y ago
        I had the same experience. Updated the computer, rebooted into the blinky screen. Powered off the machine & went to the BTRFS snapshot created immediately before my update. No damage to the screen that I'm aware of.
        snapplebobapple 4y ago
        oh, I didn't think to try the btrfs snapshot route, that's a good idea to keep in mind for me if this happens again.
        CameronNemo 4y ago
        You have to load a livecd to use an older kernel? That is pretty sad. I keep as many kernels as I like. And I can easily run a command to purge all but the running and next kernels. As another commenter mentioned, fancy pants filesystems that support snapshots simplify this situation.
        snapplebobapple 4y ago
        well, It's my laptop and Iw as playing with endeavouros on it so it didn't have any fallback kernels. choosing grub options isn't really a brains operation for most of us, we stick with defaults.
        nemetroid 4y ago
        Using a live image for the once-in-a-decade event that a kernel doesn't boot properly isn't a huge hassle.
        4y ago
    - stop50 4y ago
      damaged maybe, but i have an framework were it happened, so the maximum potential damage was lower.
- pooper 4y ago
  Thank you, Fedora maintainers. I think I didn't even see 5.19.12. I think I got skipped directly to 13. > Linux fedora 5.19.13-200.fc36.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Oct 4 15:42:43 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
osmarks 4y ago
Does it actually "damage" the display or just make it not work while 5.19.12 is loaded?
- dooglius 4y ago
  From TFA: > After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel. So sounds like it can cause some out of spec stuff at the analog level, which could plausibly result in damage, but also probably dependant on exactly what bogus values are sent in a particular case and how resilient a particular LCD is.
- GTP 4y ago
  Well, I've got a Lenovo with an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete AMD one. I'm on 5.19.12 and I didn't notice anything, but still I can't conclude that maybe there isn't something wrong going on during boot that could cause damage. I'll look now for updates.
- capableweb 4y ago
  "Potentially" and "may" harm the actual display. > After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel. https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/
- Sphax 4y ago
  I booted both of my Framework laptops on 5.19.12 and it didn’t break anything. I could type my LUKS password and still get into gdm fine. I still reverted back to 5.19.11 though.
- dmm 4y ago
  That it can damage the display is currently a hypothetical scenario. I don't think anyone has reported a broken panel. One of the i915 devs on the stable mailing list said: > After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel. My framework laptop was affected by this. When I booted 5.19.12 my display was flickering like crazy. Rebooting with 5.19.11 corrected it. 6.0 is also fine. [0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/
gambiting 4y ago
Ha, reminds me of a myth from 20+ years ago, that there was a virus that could damage your CRT display by requesting the monitor to refresh at 1000Hz or something stupid, which would damage at least some monitors without the proper safeguards. No idea if that was real though.
- darkr 4y ago
  No idea if there was a virus doing this, but it was definitely possible to permanently damage at least some CRTs by setting refresh rate too high
- capableweb 4y ago
  > reminds me of a myth from 20+ years ago > No idea if that was real though Chose one :) You can't state it was a myth and then later say you don't know! I've heard the same thing about older CRT monitors and remember reading about people damaging their CRT monitors by careless programming in regards to refresh rates. But I haven't actually seen in real life, and I must have read about this in the early 90s or something like that I think, so long time ago.
  - omnibrain 4y ago
    I heard this in regarding to Linux and X, back in the 90ies. That scared me away from Linux for quite some time. I felt confident, that I could fix any "software damage" to the family PC running Windows, but I did not want to risk hardware damage.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    Well I mean it was in the category of "you can catch mew in Pokemon Yellow if you get to the truck behind the ship"-myth. People have said it, I read about it online in the "early days" but I've never seen it happen to anyone.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Yeah, I'm in the same camp :) Heard/read about it, never seen it myself. However, I have seen people having Mew back when I played some Gameboy myself, that one is _not_ a myth :)
protoman3000 4y ago
I remember seeing somewhere that in the beginning of Linux on the Nintendo Switch that people destroyed their displays by raising the brightness bar too high. How come these things are not secured against at the LCD controller side? Why would a general purpose controller be designed to accept e.g. too high voltage levels?
- gambiting 4y ago
  Well because like you said - it's a general purpose controller. Maybe it can drive any display accepting voltage input between 5 and 12V, which means that you can use it with a display that only supports 5-8V range - you just limit the range in software and make sure the user can't select anything about 8V. But if a device is hacked and the controller sent direct commands, then of course it could lead to issues.
  - esperent 4y ago
    Well that's fair for the switch. It's a locked down platform and sold as such. If you hack, you're doing so at your own risk. But is that really the case for these laptops? Seems kind of negligent from the manufacturer if so.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    LEDs are current driven, not voltage driven. It's still weird as most controllers have the current set via resistor (either the value of inline resistor used for current measurement, or separate one), why wouldn't you set that to the max one for the panel ? edit: https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/AP3019A.pdf https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/AP3019A.pdf example of simple one. The value of the single resistor decides the max current.
- pas 4y ago
  because the whole industry [and by extension the whole world] is built on a throne of lies, shit, pain, and weapons-grade idiocy. there's absolutely no safety mindset for anything behind the cover. if it's industrial, just put a big sticker on it, write something about it in the mandatory occupational hazards training kit, maaaaaaaybe consider adding a fence, but it's fine anyway. if it's consumer stuff? well, as long as kids won't choke on it, it's A-OK. especially if it comes to electronics. just write in the user's guide that always disconnect it from the mains when not in use, if used improperly that's on you, and don't ever think about opening it. that only for professionals who are trained in the dark arts of handling this exact piece of immanetized hell-forged eschaton housed in a convenient beige plastic. adding a voltage limiter between the LCD panel and the input would cost money. designing it would cost money. adding an analog limiter on the regulator would cost money (plus setting it mechanically is very expensive compared to flashing on some firmware), compartmentalizing the software - by having a segment that's set at assembly that contains the physical properties of connected parts, which communicates the operational limits, and the other segment which can be set via software - would also cost a lot of money.
frankjr 4y ago
It looks like the issue was caused by a wrong merge, not by a particular commit. https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzsfrkJcwqKOO+E%2F@intel.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzsfrkJcwqKOO+E%2F@intel.com/
0x38B 4y ago
I guess I got hit by this? I updated my Framework‘s Arch install (to kernel 5.19.12) the other day and the display began flickering on and off on boot up. Had to get out a live USB to revert.
- hyperpl 4y ago
  I thought I had a hardware issue! I only got the flickering upon resume from sleep/hibernation and eventually git bisected the kernel package on Arch to find that it was indeed 5.9.12...
sirwitti 4y ago
Me: Furiously typing uname -a into terminal. Me: "Crap, I got 5.19 running" Also me: "Calm down, it's only 5.19.13" Rollercoaster of emotions :)
- prmoustache 4y ago
  According to my package history, I got 5.19.12 installed for around 1.5 days. Would that have been enough to damage my professionnal laptop? I don't know, I didn't spot any issue with the screen.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    if a laptop screen gets damaged in the woods, and no one can tell the difference, is it even damaged?
kjoedion 4y ago
- ranguna 4y ago
  If you are going down that route then you won't use any consumer grade OS ever, since they all have bugs like these every once in a while, from hardware damaging bugs to full lockout and major security vulnerabilities.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  I have to disagree here. Linux is great on laptops. A bug can happen anywhere. And macOS is way too locked down for many people. Of course Linux is great for servers too but why stop there? I really love KDE as a desktop. It's just more free and configurable than either Windows or Mac. I don't like being stuck with the choices made by the developer. For this reason I don't use gnome either but it's good that it exists for those who do subscribe to the opinionated software concept. That's the biggest strength of Linux. It can be whatever you want it to be. PS using FreeBSD as my daily driver desktop myself :) But not on a laptop but on a NUC.
  - CoolCold 4y ago
    > Of course Linux is great for servers too but why stop there? UNIX philosophy - do one thing and do it right?:)
    - GekkePrutser 4y ago
      That philosophy pertained to userspace tools, not the OS as a whole. And the waters have been muddied a lot (think systemd which does a lot of things and is still embraced for servers and desktop alike).
  - _-_-__-_-_- 4y ago
    I have to agree with you. Linux on laptops is great, especially ThinkPad's and machines older than a a few generations. I just started using gnome after being a loyal xfce user for years and it's refreshing with all it's integration (with lots of extensions for customization).
jonp888 4y ago
What does he mean by: > >> I definitely had no plans to backport any of that stuff, > >> but I guess the automagics did it anyway. > >> Looks like stable is at least missing this pile of stuff: Did a half-finished feature end up in the release due to an automatic merge?
- cesarb 4y ago
  By "automagics" he probably means the artificial intelligence bot which tries to guess which commits should be backported to the "stable" (in this case, 5.19.x with x other than 0) kernel, even though they have not been explicitly marked to be backported. That bot has been controversial for some time, see for instance the article at https://lwn.net/Articles/863505/ https://lwn.net/Articles/863505/ and the older articles it links to.
  - bentcorner 4y ago
    That's.. an interesting approach. I can understand why they want to have a bot help out but personally I'd feel very wary of a bot selecting commits to merge. In my completely uninformed opinion it sounds like there's process improvements that could be made alongside using the bot to point out interesting commits that can be reviewed by a human. Here's an article about the machine learning bits: https://lwn.net/Articles/764647/ https://lwn.net/Articles/764647/
yc-kraln 4y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned the Therac-25 debacle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 This is a lesson we've learned many times over by now: Software limits alone are insufficient.
pjmlp 4y ago
So, 30 years later and the advice regarding bad X Windows configurations still apply.
- akho 4y ago
  This is not X, failure is in early stages of boot.
nyanpasu64 4y ago
Interestingly I have a similar experience of flashing displays, though my issue reflected the backlight and not the panel poweron sequence. After chip-level-flashing an Ivy Bridge Dell laptop with a corrupted BIOS chip, I was disappointed to find that the backlight was dimmed using PWM at 100 Hz (10ms periods) (CORRECTION: 200 Hz), where 50% brightness in Linux sets the light to turn on for 5ms, then off, and repeat every 10ms. This causes noticeable flicker when I move my hand in front of the screen. Reading through the i915 driver and Sandy/Ivy Bridge GPU datasheets, I found that the backlight was controlled by two GPU registers at 0x48250 and 0x48254 (CPU-written?), with mirrors-ish at 0xC8250 and 0xC8254 (PCH-written?). There's actually a script to decrease the backlight period register at https://github.com/edio/intelpwm-udev https://github.com/edio/intelpwm-udev, but the problem is that Linux still scales the pulse width register based on the original period (10ms) at time of bootup and doesn't see the userspace tool writing a shorter period (higher frequency). If you halve the backlight period to 5ms, 50% brightness suddenly configures the GPU to turn the screen on for 5 of 5 ms, setting the screen to full brightness instead (all lower brightness values are doubled, and all higher ones are technically illegal chip configurations). As an added gotcha, if you write to the wrong register mirror (0xCxxxx vs 0x4xxxx), you get seizure-inducing screen backlight flicker comparable to the issue report at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/intel/-/issues/7013 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/intel/-/issues/7013. I tried recompiling the i915 driver to increase the PWM frequency at boot time, but was unable to compile and replace that driver alone due to symbol version mismatches (and I didn't want to rebuild the whole kernel on an obsolete dual-core Ivy Bridge). So I tried changing the backlight frequency in the BIOS itself, which was OS-agnostic and didn't require editing Linux drivers. I began decompiling the UEFI firmware in Ghidra and tracing control flow across multiple undocumented labyrinthine EFI executables, finding that I had to modify a VBT file's backlight PWM frequency field to change the refresh rate. Sadly this only affected pure UEFI boot and not CSM mode, but disabling CSM causes Windows 7 (the OS I used when the laptop was new, and which I keep this laptop just to run) to show a black screen. And I got burnt out from reversing EFI, and broke a flash chip leg and two motherboard pads reflashing my BIOS (and barely managed to patch the BIOS chip circuit back together with bodge wire soldered to the chip's stub)... so I'm still stuck with 100Hz flickering...
- dbttdft 4y ago
woliveirajr 4y ago
I remember back in 1998 when I was in a strong discussion on how software couldn't damage hardware: no matter what you did, you wouldn't be able to damage hardware with your bits. Yes, those who said that are long gone. Me, and the few that said it was doable (and did, moving those 5"1/4 floopies drive beyond the heads' limits), are here, watching the news...
- bewo001 4y ago
  Well, early XFree86 had strong warnings that wrong settings could result in monitor damage (which made configuring X11 even more daunting). Nothing new under the sun.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    and way back when, you could just tell a hard drive to essentially destroy itself
  - anthk 4y ago
    30-70h, 50-168v. Correct settings for my CRT back in the day.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  Whoever was claiming that in 1998 was wrong, tho. It was actually a fair bit easier back then; in particular CRT monitors could react very badly to bad signals.
capitainenemo 4y ago
One of the first chromebooks would melt and burn if you fired up alsamixer and tried toggling a few of the toggles. I encountered this myself fiddling with the audio settings and ended up with magic smoke and melting plastic before I quickly powered it off. https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-speakers-in-your-chromebook/ https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-spea... https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.advocacy/c/QslNrtxo__A/m/9o2VKW0dDAAJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.advocacy/c/QslNrtx... (note it doesn't actually require installing another distro - alsamixer was available in the base chromeos install)
- dagmx 4y ago
  Wow that Google group thread is really something else. So many of those people really need to take a break from having Linux be part of their personality.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  I wonder if something like this is what happened to my 2013 chromebook pixel. About a month after the warranty ran out, the audio quality from the left speaker rapidly degraded to distorted crap over the course of a few days, then stopped forever. Shortly later the same thing happen to the right speaker, and that computer never made a sound again. Tbh I'm still pretty salty about it.
  - jchw 4y ago
    Not an expert but that sounds like the voice coils overheated. In theory the drivers should prevent you from doing this, but in practice insufficient prevention measures in drivers/DSP combined with running too close to the sun seems to have made it possible to easily do this on some laptops, hence DELL voiding their warranty for people who turn the volume too high in VLC.[1] [1]: https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-Wiki/How-Using-the-VLC-Player-Can-Affect-the-Laptop-Warranty/ta-p/5190302 https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-Wiki/How-Using-the-VL...
    - dTal 4y ago
Waterluvian 4y ago
How does one read this classic style email chain? Do people use an application? Or do they just become experts at reading it correctly?
- rtkwe 4y ago
  You're looking at one message with quoted messages so the oldest messages are those with the highest level of '>' so usually start there for some context to where things started and work out.
- f1shy 4y ago
  I started reading mail in the 90's with a program called "pine" in the command line of a BSD machine... I find that mail easier to understand than outlook. :) Just a matter of getting used to, I guess.
  - nobleach 4y ago
    Pine and Mutt were my jam back in those days. It really did depend on whether you were keen to use Pico or Vim as your reading/composing tool. (Although you could pretty much use whatever you wanted)
    - anthk 4y ago
      I still use Mutt with mbsync (isync it's the package name) and msmtp. Heaven.
      - tmtvl 4y ago
        I use isync with maildir-utils (aka mu) through Emacs' mu4e. With HTML mail disabled it is wonderful.
        anthk 4y ago
        I use Lynx for HTML mail, it dumps the text and it shows up under mutt.
duxup 4y ago
Is there a layman's explanation for what is happening here? It talks about power and general speaking I would have thought that outside extreme cases most electronics just draw the amount of power they need but not more. Can a kernel determine this somehow?
- f1shy 4y ago
  Not sure what is the case here. But I can say something: current electronics are getting ridiculously complicated in what power supply concerns. The project I'm working now, and the last I was, we had in a 4x4 inch board more than 10 voltages (1.0v 1.1v 1.3v 1.6v 3.3v 4v 5v 6v and I do not know what more) , all generated by micro controller configured power supply circuits. Those 10 voltages had to follow a very specific sequence, failing to follow it, could in worst case, damage the whole board. Basic explanation: if circuit part B is powered before part A, power flows "backwards" to A, melting it. In addition, an error in the configuration of the supply ASICs would also lead to too high voltages. That is, the output voltage was configured in one register. I think something along the lines is going on here.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Man no protections at all... yikes.
  - megous 4y ago
    Sounds like any smartphone.
- mort96 4y ago
  What you call "power" is in fact two different things: voltage (measured in volts) and current (measured in amperes). Voltage is, essentially, how much each individual electron "wants" to move, while current is how many electrons flow. Electronic circuits will only let a certain amount of electrons flow. If the power supply has way more electrons "available" than necessary, that's no problem, you only encounter problems if the power supply can't keep up. However, electronic circuits are built to run at a particular voltage. If the electrons "want" to move too much, they may jump across gaps in unintended ways and generally cause havoc. So in short: A power supply can't damage electronics by providing too high current, but it can damage electronics by providing too high voltage. I don't know if that's what's happening here, I haven't read about the actual bug, but that's a basic primer on how it's possible to damage electronics even though they only draw the amount of current they need. And software is often involved in setting the voltages which are being supplied to certain components.
thrillgore 4y ago
I decided on Sunday to switch my Arch kernel to latest from LTS, I guess its just dumb luck it also brought Grub down and I had to roll back to using the LTS kernel.
ho_schi 4y ago
If I'm right the venerable ThinkPad X220 (T420 and so on) with Sandy Bridge (Intel HD3000) does use LVDS instead of eDP. And only some generations later Intel supported PSR with eDP. So it is safe?
forgotpwd16 4y ago
Intel drivers have been filled with issues on 5.x.x, from frequent hungs to this.
pipeline_peak 4y ago
Year of the Linux desktop, everybody should use Linux....just not one of those rare iterations where it umm permanently screws up your display.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  There's been bugs like this in Windows and MacOS too. But they'll just blame the hardware vendor and it'll get warrantied... Also spend some time reading product forums. Windows and MacOS have plenty of bugs... Anyhow, a quick google search yields stuff like this: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-windows-10-screen-flashing-problem/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-windows-10-screen-flashing...
  - pipeline_peak 4y ago
    I did a quick Google search, I didn't find any case where someone's hardware was destroyed by simply installing or updating Windows. I did however see many cases, like your example where someone did by installing another piece of software and put the blame on Windows.
KerrickStaley 4y ago
FYI if you're running Arch Linux, Linux 5.19.13 has already been released into [core] so you should be OK, assuming that your mirror is up-to-date and you've run pacman -Syu recently. https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/linux/ https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/linux/
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Alternatively, if you use linux-lts then you never got this in the first place (which is an excellent example of why https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Install_the_linux-lts_package https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Install_... suggests it).
  - throitallaway 4y ago
    I moved to linux-lts after 5.19 started inexplicably making my X1 nano unusable after a few minutes of uptime. Load creeps higher and higher until you can't do anything at all. Couldn't find anything in the logs.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Ooph that sucks. The 5.19 kernel completely broke audio for my Ryzen APU laptop too, I have to wait for a 5.19.10+ kernel in my distro (pop os) to get a fix. I dunno what's up but the 5.19 kernel has had some pretty shoddy releases or major bugs getting through. I kind of think the video, audio, etc. drivers for these highly integrated SoCs are just getting way too complex and unwieldy for anyone to reason about or review.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deeblering4 4y ago
2022 the year if linux on the… oh nevermind
bitL 4y ago
There is some weird bug on Intel NUC11TNK that makes displays at 5k2k@60/TB4 show overlapping regions with changing "soft" boundaries (like when overclocking CRT monitors that can't handle the resolution) and that bug is present on all 5.5-5.19 kernels I've tested. Maybe it's related to this bug?
nivertech 4y ago
I guess this is especially dangerous for OLED displays?

350 points by electricant 4y ago

https://xkcd.com/1328/ https://xkcd.com/1328/

Intel GPU Users Judging by https://community.frame.work/t/psa-dont-upgrade-to-linux-kernel-5-19-12-arch1-1/23171/66 https://community.frame.work/t/psa-dont-upgrade-to-linux-ker..., it has been solved in 5.9.13 already. Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2022: > 5.19.13 is now released with 8 reverts for this driver, hopefully that sould [sic] resolve this issue. thanks, greg k-h https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzxDIXMPIWqsELmj@kroah.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzxDIXMPIWqsELmj@kroah.com/

stop50 4y ago
I had this error. 13 fixed it.
- ronjouch 4y ago
  > "I had this error." Does that mean you experienced the "potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel" ? If so, was your LCD panel harmed?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - makeworld 4y ago
    My display was not damaged. Switched back to an older kernel version and it was fine.
    - snapplebobapple 4y ago
      Same here, updated my framework laptop, rebooted to blinky screen, turned it off, did some research, loaded up a livecd to revert the kernel and then updated when 5.19.13 made it into arch. Thankfully just a pain in my butt not a dead lcd for me.
      - dhruvmittal 4y ago
        I had the same experience. Updated the computer, rebooted into the blinky screen. Powered off the machine & went to the BTRFS snapshot created immediately before my update. No damage to the screen that I'm aware of.
        snapplebobapple 4y ago
        oh, I didn't think to try the btrfs snapshot route, that's a good idea to keep in mind for me if this happens again.
      - CameronNemo 4y ago
        You have to load a livecd to use an older kernel? That is pretty sad. I keep as many kernels as I like. And I can easily run a command to purge all but the running and next kernels. As another commenter mentioned, fancy pants filesystems that support snapshots simplify this situation.
        snapplebobapple 4y ago
        well, It's my laptop and Iw as playing with endeavouros on it so it didn't have any fallback kernels. choosing grub options isn't really a brains operation for most of us, we stick with defaults.
        nemetroid 4y ago
        Using a live image for the once-in-a-decade event that a kernel doesn't boot properly isn't a huge hassle.
        4y ago
  - stop50 4y ago
    damaged maybe, but i have an framework were it happened, so the maximum potential damage was lower.
pooper 4y ago
Thank you, Fedora maintainers. I think I didn't even see 5.19.12. I think I got skipped directly to 13. > Linux fedora 5.19.13-200.fc36.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue Oct 4 15:42:43 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

osmarks 4y ago

Does it actually "damage" the display or just make it not work while 5.19.12 is loaded?

dooglius 4y ago
From TFA: > After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel. So sounds like it can cause some out of spec stuff at the analog level, which could plausibly result in damage, but also probably dependant on exactly what bogus values are sent in a particular case and how resilient a particular LCD is.
GTP 4y ago
Well, I've got a Lenovo with an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete AMD one. I'm on 5.19.12 and I didn't notice anything, but still I can't conclude that maybe there isn't something wrong going on during boot that could cause damage. I'll look now for updates.
capableweb 4y ago
"Potentially" and "may" harm the actual display. > After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel. https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/
Sphax 4y ago
I booted both of my Framework laptops on 5.19.12 and it didn’t break anything. I could type my LUKS password and still get into gdm fine. I still reverted back to 5.19.11 though.
dmm 4y ago
That it can damage the display is currently a hypothetical scenario. I don't think anyone has reported a broken panel. One of the i915 devs on the stable mailing list said: > After looking at some logs we do end up with potentially bogus panel power sequencing delays, which may harm the LCD panel. My framework laptop was affected by this. When I booted 5.19.12 my display was flickering like crazy. Rebooting with 5.19.11 corrected it. 6.0 is also fine. [0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzwooNdMECzuI5+h@intel.com/

gambiting 4y ago

Ha, reminds me of a myth from 20+ years ago, that there was a virus that could damage your CRT display by requesting the monitor to refresh at 1000Hz or something stupid, which would damage at least some monitors without the proper safeguards. No idea if that was real though.

darkr 4y ago
No idea if there was a virus doing this, but it was definitely possible to permanently damage at least some CRTs by setting refresh rate too high
capableweb 4y ago
> reminds me of a myth from 20+ years ago > No idea if that was real though Chose one :) You can't state it was a myth and then later say you don't know! I've heard the same thing about older CRT monitors and remember reading about people damaging their CRT monitors by careless programming in regards to refresh rates. But I haven't actually seen in real life, and I must have read about this in the early 90s or something like that I think, so long time ago.
- omnibrain 4y ago
  I heard this in regarding to Linux and X, back in the 90ies. That scared me away from Linux for quite some time. I felt confident, that I could fix any "software damage" to the family PC running Windows, but I did not want to risk hardware damage.
- gambiting 4y ago
  Well I mean it was in the category of "you can catch mew in Pokemon Yellow if you get to the truck behind the ship"-myth. People have said it, I read about it online in the "early days" but I've never seen it happen to anyone.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Yeah, I'm in the same camp :) Heard/read about it, never seen it myself. However, I have seen people having Mew back when I played some Gameboy myself, that one is _not_ a myth :)

protoman3000 4y ago

I remember seeing somewhere that in the beginning of Linux on the Nintendo Switch that people destroyed their displays by raising the brightness bar too high. How come these things are not secured against at the LCD controller side? Why would a general purpose controller be designed to accept e.g. too high voltage levels?

gambiting 4y ago
Well because like you said - it's a general purpose controller. Maybe it can drive any display accepting voltage input between 5 and 12V, which means that you can use it with a display that only supports 5-8V range - you just limit the range in software and make sure the user can't select anything about 8V. But if a device is hacked and the controller sent direct commands, then of course it could lead to issues.
- esperent 4y ago
  Well that's fair for the switch. It's a locked down platform and sold as such. If you hack, you're doing so at your own risk. But is that really the case for these laptops? Seems kind of negligent from the manufacturer if so.
- xani_ 4y ago
  LEDs are current driven, not voltage driven. It's still weird as most controllers have the current set via resistor (either the value of inline resistor used for current measurement, or separate one), why wouldn't you set that to the max one for the panel ? edit: https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/AP3019A.pdf https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/AP3019A.pdf example of simple one. The value of the single resistor decides the max current.
pas 4y ago
because the whole industry [and by extension the whole world] is built on a throne of lies, shit, pain, and weapons-grade idiocy. there's absolutely no safety mindset for anything behind the cover. if it's industrial, just put a big sticker on it, write something about it in the mandatory occupational hazards training kit, maaaaaaaybe consider adding a fence, but it's fine anyway. if it's consumer stuff? well, as long as kids won't choke on it, it's A-OK. especially if it comes to electronics. just write in the user's guide that always disconnect it from the mains when not in use, if used improperly that's on you, and don't ever think about opening it. that only for professionals who are trained in the dark arts of handling this exact piece of immanetized hell-forged eschaton housed in a convenient beige plastic. adding a voltage limiter between the LCD panel and the input would cost money. designing it would cost money. adding an analog limiter on the regulator would cost money (plus setting it mechanically is very expensive compared to flashing on some firmware), compartmentalizing the software - by having a segment that's set at assembly that contains the physical properties of connected parts, which communicates the operational limits, and the other segment which can be set via software - would also cost a lot of money.

frankjr 4y ago

It looks like the issue was caused by a wrong merge, not by a particular commit. https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzsfrkJcwqKOO+E%2F@intel.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/all/YzsfrkJcwqKOO+E%2F@intel.com/

0x38B 4y ago

I guess I got hit by this? I updated my Framework‘s Arch install (to kernel 5.19.12) the other day and the display began flickering on and off on boot up. Had to get out a live USB to revert.

hyperpl 4y ago
I thought I had a hardware issue! I only got the flickering upon resume from sleep/hibernation and eventually git bisected the kernel package on Arch to find that it was indeed 5.9.12...

sirwitti 4y ago

Me: Furiously typing uname -a into terminal. Me: "Crap, I got 5.19 running" Also me: "Calm down, it's only 5.19.13" Rollercoaster of emotions :)

prmoustache 4y ago
According to my package history, I got 5.19.12 installed for around 1.5 days. Would that have been enough to damage my professionnal laptop? I don't know, I didn't spot any issue with the screen.
- asddubs 4y ago
  if a laptop screen gets damaged in the woods, and no one can tell the difference, is it even damaged?

kjoedion 4y ago

ranguna 4y ago
If you are going down that route then you won't use any consumer grade OS ever, since they all have bugs like these every once in a while, from hardware damaging bugs to full lockout and major security vulnerabilities.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I have to disagree here. Linux is great on laptops. A bug can happen anywhere. And macOS is way too locked down for many people. Of course Linux is great for servers too but why stop there? I really love KDE as a desktop. It's just more free and configurable than either Windows or Mac. I don't like being stuck with the choices made by the developer. For this reason I don't use gnome either but it's good that it exists for those who do subscribe to the opinionated software concept. That's the biggest strength of Linux. It can be whatever you want it to be. PS using FreeBSD as my daily driver desktop myself :) But not on a laptop but on a NUC.
- CoolCold 4y ago
  > Of course Linux is great for servers too but why stop there? UNIX philosophy - do one thing and do it right?:)
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    That philosophy pertained to userspace tools, not the OS as a whole. And the waters have been muddied a lot (think systemd which does a lot of things and is still embraced for servers and desktop alike).
- _-_-__-_-_- 4y ago
  I have to agree with you. Linux on laptops is great, especially ThinkPad's and machines older than a a few generations. I just started using gnome after being a loyal xfce user for years and it's refreshing with all it's integration (with lots of extensions for customization).

jonp888 4y ago

What does he mean by: > >> I definitely had no plans to backport any of that stuff, > >> but I guess the automagics did it anyway. > >> Looks like stable is at least missing this pile of stuff: Did a half-finished feature end up in the release due to an automatic merge?

cesarb 4y ago
By "automagics" he probably means the artificial intelligence bot which tries to guess which commits should be backported to the "stable" (in this case, 5.19.x with x other than 0) kernel, even though they have not been explicitly marked to be backported. That bot has been controversial for some time, see for instance the article at https://lwn.net/Articles/863505/ https://lwn.net/Articles/863505/ and the older articles it links to.
- bentcorner 4y ago
  That's.. an interesting approach. I can understand why they want to have a bot help out but personally I'd feel very wary of a bot selecting commits to merge. In my completely uninformed opinion it sounds like there's process improvements that could be made alongside using the bot to point out interesting commits that can be reviewed by a human. Here's an article about the machine learning bits: https://lwn.net/Articles/764647/ https://lwn.net/Articles/764647/

yc-kraln 4y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned the Therac-25 debacle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 This is a lesson we've learned many times over by now: Software limits alone are insufficient.

pjmlp 4y ago

So, 30 years later and the advice regarding bad X Windows configurations still apply.

akho 4y ago
This is not X, failure is in early stages of boot.

nyanpasu64 4y ago

Interestingly I have a similar experience of flashing displays, though my issue reflected the backlight and not the panel poweron sequence. After chip-level-flashing an Ivy Bridge Dell laptop with a corrupted BIOS chip, I was disappointed to find that the backlight was dimmed using PWM at 100 Hz (10ms periods) (CORRECTION: 200 Hz), where 50% brightness in Linux sets the light to turn on for 5ms, then off, and repeat every 10ms. This causes noticeable flicker when I move my hand in front of the screen. Reading through the i915 driver and Sandy/Ivy Bridge GPU datasheets, I found that the backlight was controlled by two GPU registers at 0x48250 and 0x48254 (CPU-written?), with mirrors-ish at 0xC8250 and 0xC8254 (PCH-written?). There's actually a script to decrease the backlight period register at https://github.com/edio/intelpwm-udev https://github.com/edio/intelpwm-udev, but the problem is that Linux still scales the pulse width register based on the original period (10ms) at time of bootup and doesn't see the userspace tool writing a shorter period (higher frequency). If you halve the backlight period to 5ms, 50% brightness suddenly configures the GPU to turn the screen on for 5 of 5 ms, setting the screen to full brightness instead (all lower brightness values are doubled, and all higher ones are technically illegal chip configurations). As an added gotcha, if you write to the wrong register mirror (0xCxxxx vs 0x4xxxx), you get seizure-inducing screen backlight flicker comparable to the issue report at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/intel/-/issues/7013 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/intel/-/issues/7013. I tried recompiling the i915 driver to increase the PWM frequency at boot time, but was unable to compile and replace that driver alone due to symbol version mismatches (and I didn't want to rebuild the whole kernel on an obsolete dual-core Ivy Bridge). So I tried changing the backlight frequency in the BIOS itself, which was OS-agnostic and didn't require editing Linux drivers. I began decompiling the UEFI firmware in Ghidra and tracing control flow across multiple undocumented labyrinthine EFI executables, finding that I had to modify a VBT file's backlight PWM frequency field to change the refresh rate. Sadly this only affected pure UEFI boot and not CSM mode, but disabling CSM causes Windows 7 (the OS I used when the laptop was new, and which I keep this laptop just to run) to show a black screen. And I got burnt out from reversing EFI, and broke a flash chip leg and two motherboard pads reflashing my BIOS (and barely managed to patch the BIOS chip circuit back together with bodge wire soldered to the chip's stub)... so I'm still stuck with 100Hz flickering...

dbttdft 4y ago

woliveirajr 4y ago

I remember back in 1998 when I was in a strong discussion on how software couldn't damage hardware: no matter what you did, you wouldn't be able to damage hardware with your bits. Yes, those who said that are long gone. Me, and the few that said it was doable (and did, moving those 5"1/4 floopies drive beyond the heads' limits), are here, watching the news...

bewo001 4y ago
Well, early XFree86 had strong warnings that wrong settings could result in monitor damage (which made configuring X11 even more daunting). Nothing new under the sun.
- asddubs 4y ago
  and way back when, you could just tell a hard drive to essentially destroy itself
- anthk 4y ago
  30-70h, 50-168v. Correct settings for my CRT back in the day.
rsynnott 4y ago
Whoever was claiming that in 1998 was wrong, tho. It was actually a fair bit easier back then; in particular CRT monitors could react very badly to bad signals.

capitainenemo 4y ago

One of the first chromebooks would melt and burn if you fired up alsamixer and tried toggling a few of the toggles. I encountered this myself fiddling with the audio settings and ended up with magic smoke and melting plastic before I quickly powered it off. https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-speakers-in-your-chromebook/ https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2012/12/10/how-to-fry-spea... https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.advocacy/c/QslNrtxo__A/m/9o2VKW0dDAAJ https://groups.google.com/g/comp.os.linux.advocacy/c/QslNrtx... (note it doesn't actually require installing another distro - alsamixer was available in the base chromeos install)

dagmx 4y ago
Wow that Google group thread is really something else. So many of those people really need to take a break from having Linux be part of their personality.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
I wonder if something like this is what happened to my 2013 chromebook pixel. About a month after the warranty ran out, the audio quality from the left speaker rapidly degraded to distorted crap over the course of a few days, then stopped forever. Shortly later the same thing happen to the right speaker, and that computer never made a sound again. Tbh I'm still pretty salty about it.
- jchw 4y ago
  Not an expert but that sounds like the voice coils overheated. In theory the drivers should prevent you from doing this, but in practice insufficient prevention measures in drivers/DSP combined with running too close to the sun seems to have made it possible to easily do this on some laptops, hence DELL voiding their warranty for people who turn the volume too high in VLC.[1] [1]: https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-Wiki/How-Using-the-VLC-Player-Can-Affect-the-Laptop-Warranty/ta-p/5190302 https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-Wiki/How-Using-the-VL...
  - dTal 4y ago

Waterluvian 4y ago

How does one read this classic style email chain? Do people use an application? Or do they just become experts at reading it correctly?

rtkwe 4y ago
You're looking at one message with quoted messages so the oldest messages are those with the highest level of '>' so usually start there for some context to where things started and work out.
f1shy 4y ago
I started reading mail in the 90's with a program called "pine" in the command line of a BSD machine... I find that mail easier to understand than outlook. :) Just a matter of getting used to, I guess.
- nobleach 4y ago
  Pine and Mutt were my jam back in those days. It really did depend on whether you were keen to use Pico or Vim as your reading/composing tool. (Although you could pretty much use whatever you wanted)
  - anthk 4y ago
    I still use Mutt with mbsync (isync it's the package name) and msmtp. Heaven.
    - tmtvl 4y ago
      I use isync with maildir-utils (aka mu) through Emacs' mu4e. With HTML mail disabled it is wonderful.
      - anthk 4y ago
        I use Lynx for HTML mail, it dumps the text and it shows up under mutt.

duxup 4y ago

Is there a layman's explanation for what is happening here? It talks about power and general speaking I would have thought that outside extreme cases most electronics just draw the amount of power they need but not more. Can a kernel determine this somehow?

f1shy 4y ago
Not sure what is the case here. But I can say something: current electronics are getting ridiculously complicated in what power supply concerns. The project I'm working now, and the last I was, we had in a 4x4 inch board more than 10 voltages (1.0v 1.1v 1.3v 1.6v 3.3v 4v 5v 6v and I do not know what more) , all generated by micro controller configured power supply circuits. Those 10 voltages had to follow a very specific sequence, failing to follow it, could in worst case, damage the whole board. Basic explanation: if circuit part B is powered before part A, power flows "backwards" to A, melting it. In addition, an error in the configuration of the supply ASICs would also lead to too high voltages. That is, the output voltage was configured in one register. I think something along the lines is going on here.
- duxup 4y ago
  Man no protections at all... yikes.
- megous 4y ago
  Sounds like any smartphone.
mort96 4y ago
What you call "power" is in fact two different things: voltage (measured in volts) and current (measured in amperes). Voltage is, essentially, how much each individual electron "wants" to move, while current is how many electrons flow. Electronic circuits will only let a certain amount of electrons flow. If the power supply has way more electrons "available" than necessary, that's no problem, you only encounter problems if the power supply can't keep up. However, electronic circuits are built to run at a particular voltage. If the electrons "want" to move too much, they may jump across gaps in unintended ways and generally cause havoc. So in short: A power supply can't damage electronics by providing too high current, but it can damage electronics by providing too high voltage. I don't know if that's what's happening here, I haven't read about the actual bug, but that's a basic primer on how it's possible to damage electronics even though they only draw the amount of current they need. And software is often involved in setting the voltages which are being supplied to certain components.

thrillgore 4y ago

I decided on Sunday to switch my Arch kernel to latest from LTS, I guess its just dumb luck it also brought Grub down and I had to roll back to using the LTS kernel.

ho_schi 4y ago

If I'm right the venerable ThinkPad X220 (T420 and so on) with Sandy Bridge (Intel HD3000) does use LVDS instead of eDP. And only some generations later Intel supported PSR with eDP. So it is safe?

forgotpwd16 4y ago

Intel drivers have been filled with issues on 5.x.x, from frequent hungs to this.

pipeline_peak 4y ago

Year of the Linux desktop, everybody should use Linux....just not one of those rare iterations where it umm permanently screws up your display.

Mikeb85 4y ago
There's been bugs like this in Windows and MacOS too. But they'll just blame the hardware vendor and it'll get warrantied... Also spend some time reading product forums. Windows and MacOS have plenty of bugs... Anyhow, a quick google search yields stuff like this: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-windows-10-screen-flashing-problem/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/fix-windows-10-screen-flashing...
- pipeline_peak 4y ago
  I did a quick Google search, I didn't find any case where someone's hardware was destroyed by simply installing or updating Windows. I did however see many cases, like your example where someone did by installing another piece of software and put the blame on Windows.

KerrickStaley 4y ago

FYI if you're running Arch Linux, Linux 5.19.13 has already been released into [core] so you should be OK, assuming that your mirror is up-to-date and you've run pacman -Syu recently. https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/linux/ https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/linux/

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Alternatively, if you use linux-lts then you never got this in the first place (which is an excellent example of why https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Install_the_linux-lts_package https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/System_maintenance#Install_... suggests it).
- throitallaway 4y ago
  I moved to linux-lts after 5.19 started inexplicably making my X1 nano unusable after a few minutes of uptime. Load creeps higher and higher until you can't do anything at all. Couldn't find anything in the logs.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

Ooph that sucks. The 5.19 kernel completely broke audio for my Ryzen APU laptop too, I have to wait for a 5.19.10+ kernel in my distro (pop os) to get a fix. I dunno what's up but the 5.19 kernel has had some pretty shoddy releases or major bugs getting through. I kind of think the video, audio, etc. drivers for these highly integrated SoCs are just getting way too complex and unwieldy for anyone to reason about or review.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deeblering4 4y ago

2022 the year if linux on the… oh nevermind

bitL 4y ago

There is some weird bug on Intel NUC11TNK that makes displays at 5k2k@60/TB4 show overlapping regions with changing "soft" boundaries (like when overclocking CRT monitors that can't handle the resolution) and that bug is present on all 5.5-5.19 kernels I've tested. Maybe it's related to this bug?

nivertech 4y ago

I guess this is especially dangerous for OLED displays?