Black borders or graphical glitch around all windows

John Smith, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better.

To clarify, if you remove the nvidia drivers is this still reproducible?

1. The black border issue is inconsistent so cannot verify whether using nouveau fixed it or not.
2. My HDD seems to be giving-up as the read-error-rate is at: 6033
   -> Which seems to result in btrfs errors/panic in syslog
   -> -> Also which seems to prevent `suspend` at the moment

3. There's a different issue with nouveau driver
   -> The title bar of 'currently-selected' window becomes almost transparent,
      the issue was not present with proprietary driver.
      [ image attached: 2 'Files/Nautilus' windows with one selected (title bar transparent) ]

4. One last thing, with proprietary driver, Google Chrome GPU process used to crash intermittently,
   and WebGL used to crash every-time on visiting maps.google.com, but it doesn't crash with nouveau.
( p.s. I know it's a chromium bug, but it might help in finding the problem in display stack.

Another thing that might help in triage is as per the workaround specified,

Changing screen position (in a 2 monitor setup: laptop + HD TV(via HDMI) ) corrects the problem,
Important thing to note is that you can use [ nvidia-x-server-settings ] or [ gnome program: Displays] to do it, in either case as soon as I click 'apply' the black border issue is corrected.
i.e. [ 'change position of either screen' -> 'click apply' -> screens blackout -> screens re-appear -> revert to previous configuration (or not) -> black borders gone ]

I sorted out the suspend issue (turns out I had inserted a faulty memory card in the laptop and as it was unable to get data 'sync' to it hence systemd was assuming that suspend transaction would be destructive :D )

I'll try to use nouveau for a few days, see if black border issue persists or comes up.

Hey Christopher,
Always a pleasure to contribute.

I have switched over to nouveau, but since the issue occurs INconsistently
I cannot immediately reproduce the bug condition. I'll most likely have to
wait and watch for suspend-resume cycles to check if the bug gets
reproduced .

Meanwhile there seems to be bug: title bar appearing transparent with
nouveau as I have posted on bug tracker

On Mon, Jun 13, 2016, 10:05 AM Christopher M. Penalver <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> John Smith, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better.
>
> To clarify, if you remove the nvidia drivers is this still reproducible?
>
> ** Tags added: latest-bios-a08
>
> ** Changed in: xorg (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Medium
>
> ** Changed in: xorg (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1576228
>
> Title:
> Black borders around all windows
>
> Status in xorg package in Ubuntu:
> Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> There seems to be a bug somewhere in [ kernel OR xorg OR nvidia
> proprietary driver ] in the display stack.
> After the laptop ( dell XPS L501X ) resumes from suspend there are wide
> black borders around all windows with close/minimize/maximize buttons
> blacked out.
>
> [ image attached: black border on all windows ]
>
> It occurs inconsistently, as it doesn't happen every time the computer
> resumes.
> ( Slight possibility that it usually occurs after long suspend, i.e.
> resuming after long time ).
>
> =================================================================================
>
> Also there seems to be certain amount of performance degradation as if
> the graphics driver was running at half-strength ( and I don't mean
> software-only rendering, neither do I mean switch over to nouveau open
> source driver )
>
> The "nVidia X Server Settings" app suggests its in maximum performance
> mode.
>
>
> ==================================================================================
>
> Adhoc Workaround: switch display layout ( I have an external
> monitor/TV attached to HDMI port ) changing anything such as
> arrangement or resolution of the displays, etcetera... corrects the
> black border issue ( and also possibly performance issue )
>
> This bug has been present in Ubuntu 14.04, 15.04, 15.10 and now in
> 16.04 as well. ( It was probably present before that as well )
>
>
> ==================================================================================
>
> p.s. this is only partial duplicate of black border issue as the black
> borders appear on every window, not just windows with new header bars
> or client side decoration...
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
> Package: xorg 1:7.7+13ubuntu3
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-21.37-generic 4.4.6
> Uname: Linux 4.4.0-21-generic x86_64
> NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_modeset nvidia
> .proc.driver.nvidia.gpus.0000.02.00.0: Error: [Errno 21] Is a directory:
> '/proc/driver/nvidia/gpus/0000:02:00.0'
> .proc.driver.nvidia.registry: Binary: ""
> .p...

Hey penalvch,

After almost a day of using nouveau, there doesn't seem to be any black border after resume from suspend, however this might be because of low suspend-resume cycle count.

I'll post update if the issue occurs on nouveau.

It seems the problem might have something to do with how shadows are rendered, AFAIK using nouveau has disabled shadows (possibly due to lower performance of graphics card on nouveau) however the shadows are enabled using the proprietary Nvidia driver 361.42...

I'm just guessing the shadows are disabled as windows are not borderless even using default theme Ambiance/Radiance

(Switching back to proprietary nVidia driver) results in (graphic corruption after resume from suspend)

However it seems there might be some issue related to how shadows are rendered. Using nouveau, there are no shadows, and windows have borders instead of being borderless with shadows.

I'm not familiar with: how the shadows are rendered, but there might be some bug with shadow rendering path.

Yes, I think that is the bug that affects several, if not many of us, in our workplace. We use Dell XPS-15-9550 laptops. I have Ubuntu 16.04 with proprietary Nvidia driver 361. I use this driver rather than nouveau, because its better support for connecting to HDMI TVs.

The borders are broad and not always completely black, sometimes they are dominated by coloured lines and sometimes they include odd character glyphs, particularly at the corners. (I say this just to help other recognise their problem as this).

Thanks for the workaround, up until now I have had to reboot. But yes, if I change the screen layout using System Settings -> Screen Display when I have an extra display connected, then all is recovered. I guess there ought to be a more direct way of refreshing screen configuration, but this workaround is easy enough.

As Dave pointed out, the problem is not consistent with black borders but also with graphical glitch around windows, which I still think, has something to do with, how shadows are rendered.

Adding an alternate attachment/image for graphic glitch.

The shadow border glitch occurs around newly run programs as well,
i.e.,

Computer suspends ->
  computer resumes ->
   graphical glitch around existing windows ->
    open new app ->
     new app also has graphical glitch around app window, where window shadow should be.

New possible workaround

on a terminal type: unity
ie

user@machine:-$ unity

this possibly restarts unity/compiz and corrects the bad border issue
although, it may also close/crash and web-browser type of programs.

Upgrading to Latest Nvidia drivers 381.22 solves the problem,
however,
the driver 381.22 is only available via the following ppa

https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa