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Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

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silentdon
Posts: 5
Joined: 2022-08-03 14:12

Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#1 Post by silentdon »

I have two issues that I suspect might be related. I am running a new install of Debian Buster on an old Asus EEE PC 1025C. After the initial boot text, the screen goes blank (no mouse, no flashing cursor, only a backlight). If I plug in a VGA cable while it is running, I also get nothing on the external display, but I can SSH into the laptop as normal. If I boot the laptop with the external monitor plugged in, then I get an output on the external monitor only with a blank laptop screen.

I have tried installing the firmware-misc-nonfree package but I still have the same problem. It occasionally boots and displays on the laptop screen but I'm not sure why. This brings me to my second issue. When I bring the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen, the laptop freezes completely. I can no longer ssh into it and I am forced to hard reboot it. This does not happen if it is displaying through the external monitor.

I suspect that these issues are driver issues but I don't know how to troubleshoot. Here are some outputs:

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username@hostname:~$ inxi -F
System:    Host: hostname Kernel: 5.10.0-16-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Console: tty 0 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: 1025C v: x.x serial: <superuser required>
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: 1025C v: x.xx serial: <superuser required> BIOS: American Megatrends v: 1025C.1301
           date: 08/16/2013
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 0% condition: 48.3/56.2 Wh (86%)
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Atom N2600 bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 512 KiB
           Speed: 1596 MHz min/max: 600/1600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1596 2: 1596 3: 1596 4: 1596
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics driver: gma500 v: N/A
           Device-2: Chicony USB2.0 0.3M UVC WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
           Display: server: X.org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa tty: 189x49
           Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console. Try -G --display
Audio:     Device-1: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.0-16-amd64
Network:   Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k
           IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
           Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c
           IF: enp3s0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 10:bf:48:65:d5:31
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 596.17 GiB used: 4.45 GiB (0.7%)
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD6400BPVT-16HXZT1 size: 596.17 GiB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 27.33 GiB used: 4.34 GiB (15.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-2: /home size: 557.3 GiB used: 111.8 MiB (0.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 976 MiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/sda5
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 71.0 C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:      Processes: 148 Uptime: 2m Memory: 964.2 MiB used: 409.6 MiB (42.5%) Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Shell: Bash
           inxi: 3.3.01

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username@hostname:~$ inxi -G --display
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Atom Processor D2xxx/N2xxx Integrated Graphics driver: gma500 v: N/A
           Device-2: Chicony USB2.0 0.3M UVC WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo
           Display: server: X.org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
           Message: No advanced graphics data found on this system.

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username@hostname:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 900, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA-1 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  
   1280x800      59.81  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32  
   640x480       59.94  
LVDS-1 connected 1024x600+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 220mm x 130mm
   1024x600      60.00*+
   1024x576      59.95    59.96    59.90    59.82  
   960x600       59.93    60.00  
   960x540       59.96    59.99    59.63    59.82  
   800x600       60.00    60.32    56.25  
   840x525       60.01    59.88  
   864x486       59.92    59.57  
   800x512       60.17  
   700x525       59.98  
   800x450       59.95    59.82  
   640x512       60.02  
   720x450       59.89  
   700x450       59.96    59.88  
   640x480       60.00    59.94  
   720x405       59.51    58.99  
   684x384       59.88    59.85  
   680x384       59.80    59.96  
   640x400       59.88    59.98  
   576x432       60.06  
   640x360       59.86    59.83    59.84    59.32  
   512x384       60.00  
   512x288       60.00    59.92  
   480x270       59.63    59.82  
   400x300       60.32    56.34  
   432x243       59.92    59.57  
   320x240       60.05  
   360x202       59.51    59.13  
   320x180       59.84    59.32  
DVI-D-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
How can I troubleshoot this?

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bw123
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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#2 Post by bw123 »

Try and see if you can get them both on with xrandr from the command line.

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$ xrandr --auto
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silentdon
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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#3 Post by silentdon »

Nothing seems to happen when I type xrandr --auto. I tried specifying the output with xrandr --output LVDS-1 --auto as well but no luck.
Last edited by silentdon on 2022-08-05 00:36, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#4 Post by @ttila »

On my laptop i simply press conbined keys to switch from different view monitor modes. Find printed icons on your keyboard.

silentdon
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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#5 Post by silentdon »

I should have included that in my original post. It's one of the first things I tried but nothing happened. I also tried changing the multiple display settings in the monitor settings, but again nothing happens on the laptop screen

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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#6 Post by Cyborg »

I remember my old Vostro 1400 laptop failed to display an image after installing Debian 9 I think. According to my notes, I
- added "quiet video=SVIDEO-1:d" to etc/default/grub
- ran "sudo update-grub"
Probably won't work for you, but maybe you could try checking your grub options.

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bw123
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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#7 Post by bw123 »

Does the laptop display consistently work during POST and bios setup preboot?
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silentdon
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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#8 Post by silentdon »

I remember my old Vostro 1400 laptop failed to display an image after installing Debian 9 I think. According to my notes, I
- added "quiet video=SVIDEO-1:d" to etc/default/grub
- ran "sudo update-grub"
Probably won't work for you, but maybe you could try checking your grub options.
When I added the line quiet video=LVDS-1:d (I used LVDS since that's the name of my screen, please correct me if I'm wrong) to /etc/default/grub and ran sudo update-grub, it gave me the error
/usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig: 33: /etc/default/grub: quiet: not found
So it doesn't seem like that's going to work.
Does the laptop display consistently work during POST and bios setup preboot?
Yes. I see BIOS, POST and grub on the laptop but once dmesg starts, it switches to the external monitor. If the external monitor isn't plugged in, then I'll see dmesg on the laptop but it will cut out at some point (i.e. it displays messages for a bit but the screen goes blank before everything finishes loading).

I just realised that I get this in dmesg

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gma500 0000:00:02.0: GPU: power management timed out.
Which led me to find out that some gma drivers have issues in linux. Further research led me to uninstall the xserver-xorg-video-intel package

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sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-video-intel
so that the default xserver-xorg-core package is used instead and....... nothing happens. I still get the same issue. Please let me know if I did it correctly.

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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#9 Post by bw123 »

When I added the line quiet video=LVDS-1:d
Nope, that disabled LVDS-1 you don't want that, undo it.
try video=LVDS-1:1024x600@60

Your inxi output said it wasn't loading intel driver. It used modesetting, after trying fbdev and vesa. The intel driver was never loaded, so maybe it's bastard chipset like described here...
viewtopic.php?t=45942

topic here might help,
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=143703

I found the driver in the kernel

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# modinfo gma500_gfx
...
description:    DRM driver for the Intel GMA500, GMA600, GMA3600, GMA3650
go slow, back up anything you edit, take notes, use #comments in files
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silentdon
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Re: Laptop only displays through external VGA monitor

#10 Post by silentdon »

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I'm backing up edited files as I go along and I'm trying not to paint myself into a corner.
video=LVDS-1:1024X600@60 did not work.

The thing is, if I remember correctly, I managed to get it working with little issue in Debian 10 with 4.19.0-21-686 kernel, but it's been over a year and I can't find my notes from back then. I'll read through the links you posted and see if they give me any ideas.

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