Introduction
Yes, this will be as long as a blog post, because: 1- i have a hard time being concise, 2- i want to help people with the same problems find an answer, if we manage to.
Issues
- Machine won’t boot if installed over UEFI
- Nvidia known bug (Ghost Display)
Machine Specs
Asus K46CM
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-3517U CPU @ 1.90GHz × 4
RAM: 8gb DDR3
Storage: 1tb HDD
iGPU: Intel HD Something?
dGPU: GeForce GT 635M/PCIe/SSE2
1. UEFI Problems
My machine is native uefi, i had previously Ubuntu (17.04 i think), Windows 10 and the latest Linux Mint, all installed over UEFI, without any problems.
When i boot up (on USB UEFI option) and install the latest Endless OS to date, it will all go smoothly until the reboot. It would go straight to bios, without it detecting any bootable partition on the HDD.
I went back to the live usb of Endless and ran Disks. There was no bootable partition marked, there was 3 partitions if i recall.
I went all over the internet trying to solve this, but since i have only one machine, i had to go back to the live usb to do some more research. Then i just gave up and installed it MBR way, no problems.
2. Nvidia’s ghost display
The bug is: The system show a non-existent “Unkown Display” on a VGA port, and at boot uses it as primary, preventing me from using the OS. This is a known bug, i don’t know if it is related to drivers, hardware or the kernel.
The workaround i found to this was, using the keyboard shortcut to switch multiple video modes, BUT since i put a password on my user’s login, the shortcut won’t work until you are on desktop. The other workaround to this was, to keep plugin in and out a hdmi tv, until the system “decides” to set the laptop screen as the primary so i can login. After this, i can disable the unkown display on video settings.
Possible solutions:
- Nvidia’s Driver: Some people on the web said that new drivers would get rid of this problem. I read that Endless installs automatically the latest driver, but the display still here so far and i found no way of knowing if there is a nvidia driver installed at all, must be a noobish problem but well. And as far as i know, Endless doesn’t allow us to install driver packages outside of system standards, please correct me if i am wrong.
- Disabling the ghost port on GRUB: I tried to edit the grub entries at boot and at the ostree-1-eos.conf, without any luck, i will describe this procedure furthermore. Many people solved the problem on other distros, but i won’t work on Endless, maybe it is my fault, but that’s why i’m here, to find out.
I will explain somethings i did to try and diagnose the problem and some web urls to where i researched.
xrandr command
output:
- VGA-0 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
- LVDS-1-1 connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 309mm x 174mm
VGA-0 is supposedly a ghost port.
There is also VGA-1-1, HDMI-1-1 and DP-1-1.
Terminal command to display connected video ports on the pc:
for p in /sys/class/drm//status; do con=${p%/status}; echo -n "${con#/card?-}: "; cat $p; done
Output:
- DP-1: disconnected
- HDMI-A-1: disconnected
- LVDS-1: connected
- VGA-1: disconnected
- VGA-2: connected
The VGA-2 port shows “connected” usually, and “unknown” when i use the grub disable command without any practical effects on the system’s behavior (that i noticed). The expected result would be for the “Unknown Display” disappear from the video settings.
GRUB Command
- Temporary command:
I used the “hold shift and press e” method to edit the boot commands, and added: “VGA-0:d” to the end of the “linux” line.- Definitive command:
I edited the ostree-*-eos.conf file on /boot/loader/entries/ and added the same command.
(On the forum people reference it as ostree-eos-*.conf but my file had the number between the words for some reason, must be an OS version mispelling or something.)Results:
Nothing at all.After some research, people said that xrandr mispells the port names sometimes, a bug maybe. Then i found that command that lists all ports and its names.
- Using VGA-2 instead of 0:
the “list ports” command changes VGA-2 from connected to unknown, but the system behaved exactly the same as far as i can tell. And i saw a few people saying that this command solved their problem on other distros.
Other Useful(?) Information
ls /sys/class/drm command
Output:
card0 card0-HDMI-A-1 card0-VGA-1 card1-VGA-2 renderD129
card0-DP-1 card0-LVDS-1 card1 renderD128 version
lspci command
Output:
- 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF108M [GeForce GT 635M] (rev a1)
- 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)
BOTTOMLINE:
- Should stay on MBR or try to solve the UEFI problemas? I would have any drawbacks, issues or risks by being lazy and staying on MBR?
- Help me solve the NVIDIA problem please.
- I’m loving Endless OS, i all in to the premise of the company, i like the way the system was design and built (ostree+flatpak), i was afraid of being compromised as a “poweruser” by using a more closed system, but i believe the benefits excess what i would lose, and in the near future it will be BIG.
- I’m Brazilian and i keep typing “problema” or “problemas” all the time.
Some research i did
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/362081/two-monitors-when-only-having-one-in-13-10
- https://askubuntu.com/questions/398903/unknown-display-besides-laptop-built-in-display-old-question-but-with-no-answer
"Sorry, new users can post only 2 links"
But i had 3 more
DISCLAIMER
I’m aware that different distros use different internal “components” for it functions and solutions may or may not work equally.