[HDMI][JP 6.2][L4T 36.4.3] Terminal not showing using HDMI

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson Orin NX
1

Hello,

I’m trying to have access to console using the HDMI output. In the documentation we have this section: Orin specific Display Configuration — NVIDIA Jetson Linux Developer Guide 1 documentation.

But my goal it’s to use only the framebuffer without having the X11. Is it possible to achieve that?

3

Yes, please follow the document to work.

4

Following the documentation together with sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target from How to boot Jetson Nano in text mode?, the device is booting directly into tty0 and I have the CLI through HDMI.

Now the only issue is that I need to have HDMI connected before booting the device. If I turn on the device and later connect HDMI there is no output.
@WayneWWW , this is an expected behavior from NVIDIA?

xorg.conf:

# Copyright (c) 2011-2013 NVIDIA CORPORATION.  All Rights Reserved.

#
# This is the minimal configuration necessary to use the Tegra driver.
# Please refer to the xorg.conf man page for more configuration
# options provided by the X server, including display-related options
# provided by RandR 1.2 and higher.

# Disable extensions not useful on Tegra.
Section "Module"
    Disable     "dri"
    SubSection  "extmod"
        Option  "omit xfree86-dga"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Tegra0"
    Driver      "nvidia"
# Allow X server to be started even if no display devices are connected.
    Option      "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration" "true"
EndSection
5

Since you are using a custom board, could you enable your GUI again and check if that hotplug issue is also there even with GUI enabled?

Just a debug process.

6

Alright, so after changing to graphical using: sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target and confirm the runlevel with:

$ runlevel 
N 5

The same behavior was observed, just had HDMI output if connect before turning on the board.

7

Also we optimized the l4t packages, maybe this is connected to that.
Current l4t packages installed:

dpkg -l | grep l4t
ii  nvidia-l4t-bootloader         36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA Bootloader Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-configs            36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA configs debian package
ii  nvidia-l4t-core               36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA Core Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-display-kernel     5.15.148-tegra-36.4.3-20250107174145    arm64        NVIDIA Display Kernel Modules Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-firmware           36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA Firmware Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-init               36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA Init debian package
ii  nvidia-l4t-initrd             36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA initrd debian package
ii  nvidia-l4t-kernel             5.15.148-tegra-36.4.3-20250107174145    arm64        NVIDIA Kernel Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-kernel-dtbs        5.15.148-tegra-36.4.3-20250107174145    arm64        NVIDIA Kernel DTB Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-kernel-oot-modules 5.15.148-tegra-36.4.3-20250107174145    arm64        NVIDIA OOT Kernel Module Drivers Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-nvml               36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA NVML Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-nvpmodel           36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA Nvpmodel debian package
ii  nvidia-l4t-nvsci              36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA NvSci Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-openwfd            36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA OpenWFD Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-optee              36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        OP-TEE userspace daemons, test programs and libraries
ii  nvidia-l4t-tools              36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA Public Test Tools Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-x11                36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA X11 Package
ii  nvidia-l4t-xusb-firmware      36.4.3-20250107174145                   arm64        NVIDIA USB Firmware Package
8

Hi,

The package does not matter. Please clarify how did you enable HDMI on your board.
For example, what did you change in device tree.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, then that is the problem.

9

Hi @WayneWWW,

Thank you for the information.

Regarding change the device tree in theory there is no change. But considering your answer it’s more likely that something is wrong in the display node.

Since I have this confirmation from NVIDIA that probably the issue is connected to the device tree, I’ll compare the device tree when the hotplug feature works(using the Jetpack6.2 with RFS from NVIDIA) and the device tree when I flash using a customized RFS.

10

Hi,

No, what I mean here is our default device tree setting is for a DP to use.

If you never changed anything there, then it is a DP mode and no one would know you hotplug a HDMI monitor there because the mechanism there are totally different between DP and HDMI…

11

I see, but the very odd part to me at least, it’s that if I flash the device using the JP6.2 → extract NVIDIA RFS ->apply_binaries.sh → flash with initrd. The result is that I have the hotplug feature working as expected.

If I understood correctly I should not have the hotplug feature even using the JP6.2 without any modifications.

12

If I understood correctly I should not have the hotplug feature even using the JP6.2 without any modifications.

No, you didn’t understand it correctly.

Our DP driver supports DP++. That means if you connect a HDMI monitor, it has chance it could still work. But there would some functional problem like it won’t work with 4k mode.

We don’t suggest to use that in such way… If you made your carrier board as HDMI port, you should change device tree but not use the default one.

14

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