Corrupt graphics in Firefox using AMD embedded graphics

[peterx14]

Hi all,

This machine has been working perfectly well, but today I notice that Firefox shows corrupt graphics; although even during login, there's a momentary glitch when it paints the screen initially... however, it all otherwise looks fine.

Mobo: MSI A320M-A Pro M2
CPU: AMD 3000G
RAM: 16GB

I'm running Xubuntu with an XFCE desktop on X11.

Attached is a Firefox screenshot. It's got BBC News as it's home page, so you can kind of see the headlines.

I've booting using the previous kernel (5.15.0-91) and it's still the same... but I can't be sure when this issue first appeared, so perhaps it was the previous-previous kernel?!

Apt is fully up-to-date, as are Snaps. I believe Firefox is running as a Snap.

[#&thj^%]

Is there any nVidia involved?

apt policy  mesa-va-drivers

If that is installed already, then try these steps below.
Firstly, open Firefox and go to about:config in url bar. Click on “Accept the Risk and Continue”. Then search for following keys, enable or disable them one by one:

• media.ffmpeg.vaapi.enabled set to true
• media.ffvpx.enabled set to false.
• media.rdd-vpx.enabled set to false.
• media.navigator.mediadatadecoder_vpx_enabled set to true.

If you experience page crashes, try setting security.sandbox.content.level to 0.

[peterx14]

No nVidia! I did wonder myself and checked, but the only "Hardware Driver" is for the Wifi. I think the AMD 3000G has graphics onboard.

$ apt policy mesa-va-drivers 
mesa-va-drivers:
  Installed: 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2
  Candidate: 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2
  Version table:
 *** 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.2 500 (phased 90%)
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy-updates/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     22.0.1-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jammy/universe amd64 Packages

I'd try changing about:config in Firefox except I can't see anything (see screenshot). I know to use ctrl-L to set keyboard focus to the address bar, but even when typing "about:config" blindly into it and hitting return, I still can't see anything.

[#&thj^%]

They have changed the look in "about:config" just add what I've shown in the list of items.
See Screenshots. Don't follow my settings seen in the scrteenshots, but try the suggestions first.

[peterx14]

I started Firefox from the command line and it says:

$ firefox
[Parent 4415, Main Thread] WARNING: Failed to mkdir /home/pryan/snap/firefox/3779/.config/ibus/bus: Not a directory: 'glib warning', file /build/firefox/parts/firefox/build/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187

(firefox:4415): IBUS-WARNING **: 17:17:29.789: Failed to mkdir /home/pryan/snap/firefox/3779/.config/ibus/bus: Not a directory
ATTENTION: default value of option mesa_glthread overridden by environment.
ATTENTION: default value of option mesa_glthread overridden by environment

of-course, this might be what it normally says during startup!!

[#&thj^%]

Yep confirmed your running firefox as a snap

[peterx14]

As mentioned already, I can't get into Firefox at all... the interface is entirely corrupt!! Thus, I can't change about:config settings there.

[#&thj^%]

Well try a new profile then.

firefox -P

Seems like something is amiss.

[peterx14]

In the meantime... I'd rebooted into Safe Mode (the OS not the browser) but that just boots up in text mode before offering me options to deal with various OS issues, or to just restart into the regular desktop... so I did that because there's no package or filesystem corruption (that I'm aware of anyway).

BUT that didn't reboot, it just seems to continue to start the desktop. So it was particularly quick... and, oddly, it defaulted by wallpaper. But more interestingly, Firefox was fine!

So I restarted and it booted as normal... but this time I got my normal wallpaper and Firefox was corrupt again!

At this point I tried creating a new profile as you suggested, using "firefox -P" but that popup up a dialogue window that would allow me to create a new profile or rename an existing one... but that window was itself corrupt! I believe I cancelled that.
But then I renamed out ~/snap/firefox to ~/snap/firefox-old and started Firefox again. This time I got what looked like a fresh Firefox startup page... but it was also corrupt.

I *think* that maybe it's something with the OS itself that's at fault, and Firefox and/or snaps particularly don't work with it. This is in part based on how when I first login, there's a "glitch" which does show some corruption on screen, but it disappears pretty much straight away.

[peterx14]

^Recovery Mode (not Safe Mode!)

Okay, so I booted back into Recovery Mode - and then just booted into the desktop, and once again, it defaults my wallpaper... and Firefox works. Starting Firefox from the command line this time yeilds:

$ firefox
update.go:85: cannot change mount namespace according to change mount (/var/lib/snapd/hostfs/usr/local/share/doc /usr/local/share/doc none bind,ro 0 0): cannot open directory "/usr/local/share": permission denied
[Parent 2117, Main Thread] WARNING: Failed to mkdir /home/pryan/snap/firefox/3779/.config/ibus/bus: Not a directory: 'glib warning', file /build/firefox/parts/firefox/build/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187

(firefox:2117): IBUS-WARNING **: 17:56:27.302: Failed to mkdir /home/pryan/snap/firefox/3779/.config/ibus/bus: Not a directory