HDMI from laptop to TV

#1

Hi all!

It’s not the end of the world but someone may have come across this in the past and might be able to give me a few pointers…

I’m using EOS 3.4.6 on an Intel Atom x5-z8350 (Cherrytrail) laptop - the usual cheap and cheerful system-on-a-chip based thing).

All is working well apart from one thing - when I try to connect the laptop to my TV using HDMI the laptop screen goes black and the TV screen shows nothing - eventually, after a few seconds, the TV shows a message to say there is no input - I’m assuming that the output from the laptop is either ‘dead’ or the frequency it is giving out is outside the range that the TV requires.

The HDMI port was working when the laptop had Win10 installed so I believe the hardware is OK.

Unfortunately I cannot attempt to connect to the laptop remotely to see what is going on when the TV is connected, as this is my only working machine at the moment, and trying to use xrandr in a terminal is proving tricky.

Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give me!

Cheers :wink:

#2

Reproduce this error and submit a diagnostic file

  1. Open the application called ‘Terminal’
  2. In this application run the command:

eos-diagnostics

  1. The above command will create a file with the information of your system (example: eos-diagnostic-160614_111731_UTC + 0100.txt); Send us this file so we can analyze and see a possible solution
#3

Cheers!

Here is the diags file.eos-diagnostic-180820_131657_UTC 0100.txt (302.2 KB)

#4

Upgrade to Endless OS 3.4.7. Has the bug been fixed?

#5

Hi there!

Unfortunately 3.4.7 does not appear to have been released yet to my mirrors - will give it a nudge and try to see if that does the trick,

#6

Unfortunately 3.4.7 doesn’t appear for me yet - everything else appears to be OK with updating / adding and removing apps so I’m not sure if 3.4.7 is on general release yet?

Many thanks

John

#7

3.4.7 should be released within a couple of weeks, but other than it being generally a good idea to reconfirm issues on the latest version, I don’t expect anything in 3.4.7 to help you here.

Unfortunately those CherryTrail devices are a pain to work with, their Linux support is substandard compared to other Intel chipsets.

I don’t have any quick suggestions, but if you have time and patience to really see this through, I think your best course of action would be to reconfirm this bug on the latest mainline kernel development version (currently 4.19-rc1) and file a DRI bug at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/ where you may be able to get Intel support. Unfortunately installing your own kernels on Endless is not easily doable so I’d suggest you use another distro to do that, such as Ubuntu which has mainline builds available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds.

#8

Hi and thanks for the reply :slight_smile:

I certainly know what these devices are like and thank goodness I found Endless before my 9 year-old daughter stopped talking to me! The ‘fun’ I have had…

Endless has proved to be a dream for her and this laptop - so far it has been the only distro that detects the WiFi, Bluetooth and sound hardware and works perfectly well with them out of the box. My usual daily driver is Linux Mint 19 and my secondary machine runs an Arch based distro.

Booting up from a live USB in this machine with Mint (kernel version 4.15.x) detects the HDMI output and will display on the TV. Additionally, booting from a SwagARCH live USB (kernel 4.17.11) detects the HDMI output and also displays on the TV screen.

So I’m not sure that this is a kernel issue as such but may be either firmware not loading or loading incorrectly or the HDMI output giving out a signal that is somehow ‘out-of-range’ of the TV I am trying to use (it is a fairly modern Samsung 4K TV).

As I say, it’s not the end of the world - my daughter just wanted to show some friends some photos she had taken on the big screen so we just used my laptop instead.

I have done more testing today, as it happens.

If I plug the laptop into an older TV (that just about makes 1080i) the display is detected by Endless and appears to work OK.

That leaves us with the following:

Endless - working on older TV
Endless - not working on newer 4K TV

Mint - working on both TVs
ARCH - working on both TVs

Could possibly be to do with ‘detection’ of the TV by Endless or that Endless is giving a signal that is somehow out-of-range of the Samsung 4K TV.

Interesting!

Thanks again

Regards

John

#9

Glad that you are enjoying our work. We have specifically done some work on select Cherry Trail platforms and it sounds like it may be carrying over here to give you a better experience in some aspects of hardware support.

Thinking more, I do have one idea about the HDMI issue. Could you please share the output of
xrandr --listproviders
on this machine running Endless, Mint and Arch? You do not need to have the TV connected.

#10

Thanks Daniel - I most certainly appreciate what you and the others at Endless are doing.

I see Endless as being the ideal distro to run on the lower spec machines (so Cherry and Bay Trail devices, for example) and other so-called system-on-a-chip or SoC computers.

They are relatively inexpensive, are usually of a non-upgradeable design, and generally pre-installed with Windows 10. Unfortunately after the first round of ‘updates’ to Windows there is generally not much room left on the internal ‘disk’ and many people give up on the machine at this stage.

When using Linux one can make a choice over which tools and software are installed and this allows for a much more ‘focused’ install - as is the case with my daughter’s laptop!

In summary, these machines, coupled with Endless, give the best of both worlds in terms of inexpensive hardware with little to go wrong and a great OS that is easy to use, update and customise.

I am away from the laptop in question for a few days but will certainly get the info from Mint and Arch when I get back.

The output from Endless is as follows:

Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x45 cap: 0xf, Source Output, Sink Output, Source Offload, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 3 associated providers: 0 name:modesetting

Thanks again

Regards

John

1 Like
#11

This is a common problem of the terminal and when you try to connect the laptop to my TV using HDMI the laptop screen goes black, and the TV screen shows nothing. There is no issue with hardware, google chrome support help you to solve this issue.

#12

Hi Daniel,

Further to the above I now have the output from Arch (SwagArch)

Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x47 cap: 0xb, Source Output, Sink Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 4 associated providers: 0 name:Intel

I will do the Mint 19 test next.

#13

…and here is the output on Linux Mint 19 (xfce)

Providers: number : 1
Provider 0: id: 0x45 cap: 0x9, Source Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 3 outputs: 3 associated providers: 0 name:modesetting

I can confirm that both Arch and Mint still work with the 4K TV.

Cheers

John

#14

That’s unconclusive then. I was wondering if the problem would only occur on a specific X driver (Intel or modesetting) but both Endless and Mint use X’s modesetting driver…

If you want to check the X Intel driver (like Arch) on Endless anyway you can mkdir /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d and then create a file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/intel.conf with contents:

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "card0"
        Driver      "intel"
EndSection

then reboot, and xrandr --listproviders should show the Intel driver. Remove the intel.conf file to go back to modesetting (the modern driver).

This was just a hunch anyway - in reality you would not expect the X driver to influence the compatibility with TVs etc. That aspect is handled by the kernel.

Endless doesn’t (knowingly) deviate from the common platform behaviour here - i.e. we don’t modify the underlying graphics driver, so the difference between Endless and Arch/Mint is going to something subtle.

Another experiment you could do is to check Ubuntu 18.04, which is a bit closer to Endless than those other distros.

And in a few weeks time we should have a EOS-3.5.0 prerelease available on our beta channel which will include a new kernel, would be worth trying that.

#15

Hi Daniel and thanks for the reply.

It is strange that the Mint 19 (based on Ubuntu 18.04) worked even though the xrandr output appeared almost identical in that it was using the modesetting driver.

I recal changing the settings in Mint 18.x (on my daily driver) in order that it would use the modesetting driver, rather than the Intel one, in order to stop screen tear when scrolling in documents and browser windows.

Anyhow, I created the intel.conf file as you suggested, re-booted and plugged in the HDMI cable to the TV.

It now works! The TV is detected as a secondary display and is actually detected as a Samsung Electronic Company 40".

Like you, I find this really strange!

One thing I have noticed, however, is that the maximum refresh rate available for the TV is 30.00Hz (the default for the laptop screen is 60.00Hz).

I noticed on both the Arch and Mint live sessions I tried on the laptop both had 30.00Hz for the TV as the default max refresh rate - is it possible that Endless is attempting to use a higher refresh rate by default and thereby preventing the TV screen from either being detected or acheiving sync with the laptop?

Just a thought!

I’m happy to either continue ‘prodding’ this thing if you are still interested or I’m happy to revert back to the modesetting driver - I guess the update to Endless 3.5.0 will likely revert this anyway?

Thanks again for your help / pointers and suggestions.

Cheers
John

#16

Ah, I had overlooked that Mint is based on Ubuntu. So how the modesetting driver works there (but not on Endless) remains a mystery.

And it’s a little unexpected that switching to the Intel driver on Endless makes it work. That file will persist over updates though, so it is hopefully an acceptable workaround, as long as it doesn’t bring other annoyances. The Intel driver is poorly maintained so we may have to remove it some day, but it is staying around for now.

If you want to go further into the diagnosis, I think you would need to go back to modesetting, connect it to the TV to reproduce the bug, then login over ssh and gather journal logs and output of DISPLAY=:0 xrandr (and do the same with the intel driver for comparison).

#17

Very strange indeed!

I’m OK to go with things as they are I think - although I’ll probably have a go with your suggestion if I can get on the laptop at some point.

As I’ve said, the original (modesetting) driver works on my other ‘generic brand’ TVs but not the Samsung so I may just be ‘unlucky’ in the combination of hardware and software that I have here.

What I might do is have a go at using Endless on my daily driver laptop and see if I can reproduce the issue - so far the only thing we know is that the combination of Endless, using modesetting, and the Samsung TV are where the issue is reproduceable - using a different laptop may further tie this down…

Thanks for your help Daniel - we can close this off as solved I think - the Intel driver seems to work for now!

Cheers and thanks again!

John

#18

@thetechiemon Upgrade to Endless OS 3.4.7. Has the bug been fixed?

#19

@LeandroStanger

I did the upgrade to 3.4.7 in order to be as up-to-date as possible.

However, upon reverting to the modesetting driver the original issue was still apparent and the laptop screen went blank and no output was seen on the TV screen.

Reverting to the Intel driver allows the display to be seen, controlled and adjusted on both.

I am working with the Intel driver being the ‘fix’ for the moment.

However, I am intending to run Endless OS on my other laptop, using both the Intel and the modesetting driver, to see if I can reproduce the problem on different hardware (both laptops are running Intel integrated graphics).

I am thinking the issue lies with the modesetting, driver as implemented in Endless, and my specific hardware. My Mint laptop is also using the modesetting driver and works fine on the TV - both laptops are using the 4.15.x series of the Linux kernel and both Mint and Endless have Ubuntu/Debian at their core.

#20

@Daniel @LeandroStanger

OK, so I have booted my daily driver laptop (usually running Mint with the modesetting driver and a Celeron dual dore processor and 8GB RAM) using Endless OS on a USB drive.

I checked in Terminal and I can confirm that the modesetting driver is in use. I connected the laptop to my TV (40" Samsung) and the display works with this configuration - however, the TV is detected as a Samsung 85"!!!

It does work, however, which is good news. This means the only configuration that does not work is the Cherry Trail Atom quad core equipped laptop with the modesetting driver (Intel driver works well).

For reference, the video chipset in the Atom laptop is Intel HD Graphics (Cherrytrail).