Guidance on how to collect debugging information for compositing issue in gnome-shell

[Alex Villacís Lasso]

I am currently running Fedora 18 x86_64, with the following packages:

gnome-shell-3.6.3.1-2.fc18.x86_64
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.13.3-3.fc18.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.21.8-1.fc18.x86_64
xorg-x11-glamor-0.5.0-5.20130401git81aadb8.fc18.x86_64
mesa-dri-drivers-9.2-0.7.20130528.fc18.x86_64
mesa-libGL-9.2-0.7.20130528.fc18.i686
kernel-3.9.11-200.fc18.x86_64

lspci reports the following:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31 
Express Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:29c2] (rev 10) (prog-if 00 
[VGA controller])
     Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:0ded]
     Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 42
     Memory at fdf00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
     I/O ports at ff00 [size=8]
     Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
     Memory at fdb00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
     Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
     Capabilities: <access denied>
     Kernel driver in use: i915


The Xorg.0.log section that identifies my display chipset is the following:

[    14.652] (II) intel(0): Creating default Display subsection in 
Screen section
         "Default Screen Section" for depth/fbbpp 24/32
[    14.652] (==) intel(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
[    14.652] (==) intel(0): RGB weight 888
[    14.652] (==) intel(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[    14.652] (--) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) G33
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): Relaxed fencing enabled
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): Wait on SwapBuffers? enabled
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): Triple buffering? enabled
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): Framebuffer tiled
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): Pixmaps tiled
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): 3D buffers tiled
[    14.652] (**) intel(0): SwapBuffers wait enabled
[    14.652] (==) intel(0): video overlay key set to 0x101fe
[    14.668] (II) intel(0): Output VGA1 has no monitor section
[    14.686] (II) intel(0): EDID for output VGA1
[    14.686] (II) intel(0): Manufacturer: LNX  Model: 0  Serial#: 0
[    14.686] (II) intel(0): Year: 2012  Week: 5
[    14.686] (II) intel(0): EDID Version: 1.3

I am having the following issue. In gnome-shell, I can work normally for 
a few hours, but eventually, the compositing starts to fail. For 
example, the Firefox tooltip popups, as well as menus in all 
applications, start appearing as black rectangles instead of the proper 
content. If I switch between already-open applications with Alt-Tab, the 
contents of the windows appears normal, and properly updates, but the 
windows of newly started applications appear transparent, with the 
compositing border around the invisible window as the only indication 
that the window is supposed to be there. When this happens, I have to 
shut down the user session, log out (which apparently restarts Xorg) and 
then log in again. This (temporarily) fixes the issue.

I have tried the stock Fedora 18 kernel, as well as a self compiled 3.10 
kernel, and the eventual failure occurs in both kernels.

I used to suspect that starting a video window (Totem, mplayer, visiting 
youtube) could trigger the failure after a while, until yesterday I 
experienced the failure without once triggering a video window.

When the failure happens, there is no indication in dmesg or Xorg.0.log 
that clearly points to an associated failure that could be linked to the 
compositing failure. Switching into the text console (KMS) and back to 
the same instance of Xorg does nothing to fix the issue. I have also 
checked /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_error_state to see if there is 
anything there, but it says "no error state collected"

I want to collect enough debugging information to allow quick diagnosis 
of this issue. However, since dmesg remains silent as well as 
i915_error_state, I do not know where else to look. Please advice on this.