Posted on 01/15/2019 7:59:04 AM PST by zeugma
Some time back I retired my old Pine64 Media Center. I replaced it with an Intel NUC cube which I'd loaded up with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB hard disk. Soeed isn't really an issue with this system, so I went with spinnign platters rather than an SSD. I installed Linux Mint XFCE4 on it along with all of my music (90GB) and vids of various movies and cartoons I've ripped over the years.
Everything is working great, and in fact, today I finally made it all the way through my first complete pass through my music library. However, there is one issue that I'm having that I haven't been able to figure out how to actually 'fix', rather than just work around.
A little more background on my setup that I believe is influencing the issue is probably going to be necessary. The NUC is plugged into my stereo via an HDMI cable from the stereo, it goes to the TV. Obviously, the sound goes direct to my 5.1 speaker setup, but the video goes to the TV.
In the morning, if I turn the TV on to start the music, the screen comes up with vertical lines on top of the desktop image. It looks like this ...
The screenshot above is a little more fuzzy than it would normally be because I had to use my phone to take the picture, since a screen capture on the device itself shows just a clean desktop. The program in the image above is the Display configuration application. You probably can't read it, but when the system does the autodetect of the monitor as it detects the video refresh rate, for some reason it selects '59Mhz'. If I select the '60Mhz' setting in the pulldown, and then select 'apply', the screen clears up and everything looks normal...
If I now turn off the TV, and then turn it back on, everything comes up clean. It appears that the problem only kicks in after the operating system thinks the monitor should be put into hibernate mode after inactivity.
I'm almost positive that if I were to connect directly to the TV from the NUC it would work fine. The sync up on the display takes a few seconds when/if I turn the stereo off and on, so it would appear that the autodetect stuff is being influenced by having the stereo as an intermediate device.
So that is a lot of verbiage just to say that I'm looking for a way to force Linux to sync the refresh rate at 60Mhz. I've looked all around the configuration stuff in /etc and can't seem to find where this is controlled. Again, I'm running XFCE4, so I'm not sure if there is an issue with that or not, but I don't particularly want to reload the box to a different Mint flavor.
I suspect that something in the systemd voodoo is interfering, but I honestly do not know enough about systemd yet to be able to figure out how to force things.
I'm hoping that someone here might have an idea or two. If not, I'm cool with having to adjust it on those rare occasions that I need to turn on the TV to actually do something at the console. Most of the time, the system pretty much runs effectively headless.
This is what that little script spits out when I ran it on an old motherboard with onboard video. This is on a minimal install of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with ratpoison as the window manager, no display manager, and no xorg.conf.
Jan 16 06:20:34 nostr0mo kernel: [ 1.816935] [drm] radeon kernel modesetting enabled. Jan 16 06:20:34 nostr0mo kernel: [ 1.822090] [drm] initializing kernel modesetting (RS780 0x1002:0x9616 0x1458:0xD000). [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1600x900"x60.0 108.00 1600 1624 1704 1800 900 901 904 1000 +hsync +vsync (60.0 kHz eP) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1280x1024"x60.0 108.00 1280 1328 1440 1688 1024 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync (64.0 kHz e) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1440x900"x59.9 106.50 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 903 909 934 -hsync +vsync (55.9 kHz e) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1280x720"x60.0 74.25 1280 1390 1430 1650 720 725 730 750 +hsync +vsync (45.0 kHz e) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "1024x768"x60.0 65.00 1024 1048 1184 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync (48.4 kHz e) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "800x600"x60.3 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync (37.9 kHz e) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "640x480"x60.0 25.20 640 656 752 800 480 490 492 525 -hsync -vsync (31.5 kHz e) [ 14.018] (II) RADEON(0): Modeline "720x400"x70.1 28.32 720 738 846 900 400 412 414 449 -hsync +vsync (31.5 kHz e) Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 900, maximum 8192 x 8192 VGA-0 connected primary 1600x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 443mm x 249mm 1600x900 60.00*+ 1280x1024 60.02 1440x900 59.89 1280x720 60.00 1024x768 60.00 800x600 60.32 640x480 60.00 720x400 70.08I assume that the kernel modesetting has something to do with getting the correct display resolution without an xorg.conf.
If you look at
man Xorgthere is a -configure option that will create an xorg.conf file for you.
caveat: I have never done this, and I don't know how it works.
NUC:~$ Xorg -configure (EE) Fatal server error: (EE) Server is already active for display 0 If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock and start again. (EE) (EE) Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help. (EE)
Xorg :0 -configurewhich ran and the last line in the log said
No devices to configure. Configuration failed.I searched around, and so far have not found anyone who got an xorg.conf successfully created with -configure.
If you actually get it to work, let us know how you did it.
You can force the EDID with a kernel command line in your grub configuration.
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.14/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.html
Scroll down to;
drm_kms_helper.edid_firmware=yadda yadda
Does your audio have any options relating to the HDMI and/or EDID? I have had similar issues with HDMI/DVI and having a KVM in the mix. Can be solved on the KVM config side.
Is your NUC the one with TOSLINK? Does your Yammy have an optical port?
Lots of ways to skin the feline.
I have not needed to edit an Xorg.conf in many years.
YMMV
:)
So far I'm getting similar results.
NVidia has a really cool program for generating an xorg.conf file for you, but unfortunately this isn't an NVidia Vid.
At this point, I'm pretty sure my solution is going to be to generate a good and tight xorg.conf file, but I'm going to have to do some more research on that. Again, my biggest problem is the way the problem presents. I only get the 'rain' on screen after the thing has sat overnight, or a similar long period of time has passed. Fortunately, I really don't use the console on this box very much. It's pretty much an over-engineered music player for the most part, though I do have a bunch of vids on it for when I run out of books to read. (which doesn't happen often).
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