Arch Linux

reisen

Member

Registered: 2015-09-27

Posts: 2

HDMI randomly not detected at boot

Hi, good morning!

TL;DR: HDMI monitor randomly not detected at boot on a NVIDIA Optimus laptop even on tty2-7 (text-mode). How to fix it?

--

I'm using a Samsung RF-511 SD6 (BR) (note: NVIDIA Optimus) laptop and running it on Linux for a few years. Since I've moved to Linux I have a problem which I still didn't find anything that worked, sometimes at boot time the external HDMI monitor is not detected (even on tty2-7). The monitor was always detected under Windows, which was used on this laptop for about ~1 year and it didn't happen a single time. Also, while running tools like Clonezilla it was always detected after boot but I don't know if it was just because "it just worked by coincidence".

This is my setup:
- Samsung NVIDIA Optimus laptop with a HDMI (and a VGA) output -> HDMI/DVI adapter -> AOC e2240Vwa (only a DVI and a VGA input).
- uname -a: Linux i-arch 4.1.8-1-ck #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Sep 21 18:53:10 EDT 2015 x86_64 GNU/Linux
- DE: Plasma 5/KDE - "pacman -Q | grep plasma-desktop": plasma-desktop 5.4.1-2 ; "pacman -Q | grep 'sddm\ \d*'": sddm 0.12.0-2
- NVIDIA GPU -> Intel integrated graphics offloading setup. (http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/L … ndr14.html)

Possible temporary fixes that I've been doing since the first time:
- Shutdown, wait, power on, wait udev messages, check if any text is displayed on the HDMI monitor, if not: shutdown+power on again until it works. (Boring.)
- Boot anything that just works, power off, boot Linux. (Backup tools like Clonezilla or Windows which is not installed anymore.)
- Use the VGA output. (Lower quality.)

The "reboot fix" usually takes from 1 to 5 times until the HDMI monitor works so it's a quite annoying thing.

Is there a known way to fix this issue?

Thanks in advance!

Info:
- As I've said before when the monitor isn't detected it does not display anything even in text-mode so I think it may be something related to systemd, kernel or udev. Starting or exiting DE or forcing xrandr command does not help at all.
- On systemd boot the monitor (when it is detected) displays text and works after this line: [   10.144404] systemd[1]: Starting udev Kernel Device Manager...
- If the monitor is detected everything works smoothly, even after unplugging the HDMI cable and connecting it again.
- There's no option to disable Optimus in the SETUP.

Command outputs:

$ lspci | grep '3D\|VGA\|NVIDIA'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108M [GeForce GT 540M] (rev a1)

$ pacman -Q | grep nvidia
lib32-nvidia-libgl 352.41-1
lib32-nvidia-utils 352.41-1
lib32-opencl-nvidia 352.41-1
nvidia 352.41-1
nvidia-ck 352.41-2
nvidia-libgl 352.41-1
nvidia-utils 352.41-1
opencl-nvidia 352.41-1

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "layout"
        Screen 0 "nvidia"
        Inactive "intel"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier "nvidia"
        Driver "nvidia"
        BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "nvidia"
        Device "nvidia"
        Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier "intel"
        Driver "modesetting"
        BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option "AccelMethod" "none"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "intel"
        Device "intel"
EndSection

- When the HDMI monitor IS DETECTED:

$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
VGA-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1024x768      60.00 +
   <... other modes ...>
LVDS-1-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1366x768      60.07 +
   <... other modes ...>
VGA-1-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1-0 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   <... other modes ...>
DisplayPort-1-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  1024x768 (0x48) 65.000MHz
        h: width  1024 start 1048 end 1184 total 1344 skew    0 clock  48.36KHz
        v: height  768 start  771 end  777 total  806           clock  60.00Hz
  <... other modes ...>

$ dmesg > http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=DqvS1CUJ

- When the HDMI monitor IS NOT DETECTED:

$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2390 x 768, maximum 16384 x 16384
VGA-0 connected 1024x768+1366+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1024x768      60.00*+
   <... other modes ...>
LVDS-1-0 connected primary 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1366x768      60.07*+
   <... other modes ...>
VGA-1-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
  1024x768 (0x46) 65.000MHz
        h: width  1024 start 1048 end 1184 total 1344 skew    0 clock  48.36KHz
        v: height  768 start  771 end  777 total  806           clock  60.00Hz
  <... other modes ...>

$ dmesg > http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=7TFzi16g

Last edited by reisen (2015-09-27 10:50:32)

d4rkeagle6591

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 18

Re: HDMI randomly not detected at boot

I had this exact same thing happen, where it was an intermittant detection on my Lenovo Y70 Touch. I did a bunch of looking in systemlogs, and xrandr config, etc. I ended up replacing my HDMI cable, and now I have no issues at all. Just wanted to mention in case you havent tried it yet. I also had that same HDMI cable that was having issues have literally no issues in windows.

reisen

Member

Registered: 2015-09-27

Posts: 2

Re: HDMI randomly not detected at boot

Was your cable a HDMI->DVI one? Did you replaced with some different model?