Secondary monitor via HDMI issue

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hello,

i have a laptop Lenovo IdeaPad L340-15IRH running Arch Linux. Laptop has Nvidia 1650 GPU. By installing Prime and Nvidia proprietary drives and by blacklisting Nouveau i can use prime-run to run games on dedicated GPU. Yaaay, and it works very nice, 10 points to Nvidia! :)

The only remaining issue is my secondary monitor. I connect it via HDMI and even thou nvidia-settings immediately recognizes the monitor but it never even activates and when i try switching between monitors using “external display” button on my laptop, only choice i have is primary laptop monitor.
External monitor is ok, works properly when i switch to Windows.

What am i doing wrong? Xorg.conf file attached below
xorg.txt (1.3 KB)

Screenshot_2020-02-14_23-57-42.png
Screenshot_2020-02-14_23-57-42.png859×653 92.6 KB

2

Hello,

Same issue here (Manjaro, 440.59 driver version).
Looks like external monitors are not supported yet in proprietary drivers.
Unfortunately, I don’t see a workaround for this issue yet. We need to wait for NVIDIA to fix this in the future release.

Regards,
KD.

3

Hi,

Could you please send nvidia bug report in repro state.

4

Hello. Not sure what “repro state” means, here is the nvidia-bug-report i generated. Sorry for not including it in the original post :(

After research i did online i’m very confident my laptop HDMI port is attached to NVIDIA card and only solutions i could find for those scenarios were like “run entire session on Nvidia always” but power-wise it’s not very reasonable so if possible i would avoid it :)
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (277 KB)

5

Hello,

I would like to share a solution that I am currently sticking to.
While we are waiting for NVIDIA to fix HDMI support, I believe that following workaround is the best way to handle the issue.

The idea is to switch whole X session to NVIDIA but not all the time.
My point was to switch only when HDMI output is being used.
Unfortunately switching to NVIDIA requires X-Server to be restarted.
Also, the switch needs to be triggered manually.
It’s not a perfect solution, but at least it allows me to use external monitor when I need it.

If you are interested in such solution, please follow these steps:

  1. Create new config file (note “.disabled” suffix, we will need this settings to be disabled by default):
nano '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/999-zzz_custom_nv_multiscreen.conf.disabled'

### @KD Custom ###
# dGPU only, fixes nvidia HDMI support, breaks dGPU powersaving
# NOTE: more tweaks required at: /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup

Section "Module"
    Load "modesetting"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Driver "nvidia"

    # NOTE: verify your BusID with command: `lspci | grep -E "VGA|3D"`
    BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

    Option "AllowEmptyInitialConfiguration"
EndSection
  1. Edit SDDM config file (if you don’t use SDDM it will be a different file):
nano '/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup'

#!/bin/sh
# Xsetup - run as root before the login dialog appears

### @KD Custom ###
if [[ -f '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/999-zzz_custom_nv_multiscreen.conf' ]]; then
    # NOTE: verify provider names with command: `xrandr --listproviders`
    xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-G0

    xrandr --auto
    xrandr --dpi 96
fi
  1. Then you can use following commands to switch:
  • from Intel to NVIDIA (enable HDMI, disable power-saving):
ln -s '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/999-zzz_custom_nv_multiscreen.conf.disabled' '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/999-zzz_custom_nv_multiscreen.conf' && systemctl restart sddm
  • from NVIDIA to Intel (disable HDMI, enable power-saving):
    • rm '/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/999-zzz_custom_nv_multiscreen.conf' && systemctl restart sddm

    Basically that’s all.
    You might want to save above commands as scripts.

    By the way - I think that similar behavior might be achieved with optimus-manager:

    https://github.com/Askannz/optimus-manager/wiki

    However I am not sure about this one. I have never used it. And for the current issue - I wanted to avoid installing external software.

    Regards,
    KD.

    6

    dziamilapps thank you so much for the reply. Unfortunately this method didn’t work for me :( I followed the steps, very easy. Instead of sddm i edited /etc/lxdm/PreLogin as i’m using LXDM but anyway i couldn’t achieve any result :(

    Regarding the drivers - this is actually somethinf Nvidia is expected to integrate into their driver? Is there a timeline for that? Because seems like a very important feature :)