Text Bunching Up and Overlaying LibreOffice & Other Programs

tonyawards · 07-17-2021, 02:38 PM

One of our Manjaro installations on a Dell Inspiron 5566 laptop has been having a weird issue with text, and copy-paste. If a paragraph (or even less) of text is copied over from libreoffice-still to an email window (eg: yahoo or gmail in a chrome browser), the text all stacks up and overlays itself on to one line. It can also happen when copying from document to document, and the text will sometimes overlay itself inside one document as I am typing it, overwriting the next line on top of the first one.
Seems weird since it happens in more than just libreoffice, and happens most often when copying into an email text window.

This has been going on for longer than the past three stable updates at least, so I don’t really have a recent update set to refer to. Sometimes I can work around it by copying over one line at a time into the new document or email, and sometimes even that won’t work. The mouse cursor will not even move to the back of the line at that point, it stays stuck in the front of the line of text.
I’ve looked through the forum here a few times but have not really seen anything that matches this issue, so I’m posting now. Any ideas as to where to check, or logs/output that could help to debug this? I’m happy to provide any help I can. The system is always up to date with latest upgrades and kernels, etc. It's a basic Manjaro installation, with xfce DM and using xorg. All else seems perfectly fine.

Thanks very much.

frankbell · 07-17-2021, 08:12 PM

I have never encountered this, and have used LQ on many distros since it was first forked (but not Manjaro), including on several Dells over the years.

It's a shot in the dark, but if might be useful to know what specific graphics chipset is installed in this machine.

tonyawards · 07-18-2021, 05:12 PM

Hello frankbell - thanks for getting back to me. Yes, it's weird. It constantly writes new characters over the old ones on one line until it's a big black mess. Sometimes it will also refuse to advance the mouse or cursor further in the .odt doc as well.

I will give the output of inxi -Fazy here in case any of that data helps. But it looks like it is a standard issue Intel HD Graphics 620 chipset with an i915 Dell driver.

Quote:

System:
Kernel: 5.12.9-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.12-x86_64
root=UUID=67501362-d5b8-4606-bd67-414de8d11e45 rw quiet
resume=UUID=58d28b12-457c-4d9f-b478-42e03441522d
Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 tk: Gtk 3.24.29 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 vt: 7
dm: LightDM 1.30.0 Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 5566 v: N/A serial: <filter>
Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter>
Mobo: Dell model: 0YRTVV v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 1.7.0
date: 05/16/2018
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 32.4 Wh (100.0%) condition: 32.4/41.4 Wh (78.2%)
volts: 16.9 min: 14.8 model: Panasonic DELL 78V9D6A type: Li-ion
serial: <filter> status: Full
Device-1: hidpp_battery_0
model: Logitech Wireless Mobile Mouse MX Anywhere 2 serial: <filter>
charge: 100% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes status: Discharging
CPU:
Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-7100U bits: 64 type: MT MCP
arch: Amber/Kaby Lake note: check family: 6 model-id: 8E (142) stepping: 9
microcode: DE cache: L2: 3 MiB
flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
bogomips: 19204
Speed: 900 MHz min/max: 400/2400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 900 2: 1019
3: 2330 4: 1676
Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled
Type: l1tf
mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
Type: spec_store_bypass
mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Type: spectre_v1
mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional,
IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling
Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode
Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 620 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel
bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5916 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: Realtek Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo
bus-ID: 1-5:3 chip-ID: 0bda:5684 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: intel
unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo>
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.1.2
direct render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:9d71
class-ID: 0403
Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.12.9-1-MANJARO running: yes
Sound Server-2: JACK v: 0.125.0 running: no
Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Dell Vostro 3470 driver: ath9k v: kernel port: f040 bus-ID: 01:00.0
chip-ID: 168c:0036 class-ID: 0280
IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Dell
driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8136
class-ID: 0200
IF: enp2s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-8:7
chip-ID: 0cf3:e005 class-ID: e001
Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: down bt-service: enabled,running
rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes address: see --recommends
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 199.58 GiB (21.4%)
SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends
ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HTS721010A9E630
size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s
rotation: 7200 rpm serial: <filter> rev: A3J0 scheme: GPT
Partition:
ID-1: / raw-size: 51.76 GiB size: 50.7 GiB (97.95%) used: 15.73 GiB (31.0%)
fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1
ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 300 MiB size: 299.4 MiB (99.80%)
used: 264 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda4 maj-min: 8:4
ID-3: /home raw-size: 870.57 GiB size: 855.91 GiB (98.32%)
used: 183.85 GiB (21.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3 maj-min: 8:3
Swap:
Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8.89 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 42.0 C mobo: 32.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C
Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0
Info:
Processes: 174 Uptime: 45m wakeups: 3 Memory: 5.7 GiB
used: 813.4 MiB (13.9%) Init: systemd v: 248 tool: systemctl Compilers:
gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: pacman: 1383 lib: 419 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.8
running-in: xfce4-terminal inxi: 3.3.04
[smitten@smitten-pc ~]$

Since it most often happens when copying an .odt doc from the laptop into an email text composing window, I'm really not sure if it is related to the libreoffice or some copying parameter, or...?

We have one Arch and two other Manjaro laptops here, and have never seen anything resembling this either.

Would reinstalling LibreOffice make any sense. I'd rather not unless necessary, as settings all have to be reconfigured, but if that could fix it in your view, I'd give it a go.

Thanks for the input.

tonyawards · 08-01-2021, 03:50 PM

I tried reinstalling libreoffice but with no luck. Is there some setting, or missing/corrupted library or file that might cause this copy-paste text to bunch up and paste all into one line inside a browser email 'compose' window? Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but not sure where to check. I have had no luck googling this one...