Secondary display not activating at boot

rmdegennaro

rmdegennaro

Hi,

I've used BSD very little, so please forgive my ignorance. I've gotten FreeBSD 14 working on an Dell Optiplex 7010. And I've used pkgs, not ports, and have KDE running using X11.

I'm learning a lot on my own, but running into troubles figuring out one issue. I have 2 x 1080 monitors, plugged into 2 x KVMs. And in addition to the FreeBSD system, I have a Kubuntu system and an RPi system. The Kubuntu & RPi OS systems boot up with both monitors detected and displaying. The FreeBSD system does not until I go to terminal window and run
Code: 
xrandr --listproviders
. Once I do that, the secondary display is dynamically enabled and the desktop is extended to it.

I've tried using different ports on the KVM, different cables, different display-port to HDMI adapters, swapping things between the 2 ports, etc. But nothing like that has worked.

I don't mind deep diving into the OS, but would love some help with a direction. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Best,
Riotsuu
 
A little more digging and broadening my search suggest things are related to the window manager. I don't see a way to move this thread, sorry that it probably in the wrong location.

Most the posts I'm finding here or on reddit or other places are old. I've not had to edit X11 config files for a long time in Linux. Is that expected on FreeBSD?

Some added information, from a fresh start or restart, KDE's settings GUI shows only 1 monitor. Once I do the xrandr command, a second monitor appears. It is remembering configuration for the dual monitor at that time though. So without knowing what is going on, I'm leery of manually editing files and stepping on what software is doing. In FreeBSD, am I supposed to read the code to figure out what's going on?

Thanks again for any insight.
 
If that line of code works for you when you run it manually then it might be worth adding it to your ~/.xinitrc to see if it also automatically fixes the issue for you whenever you start X.
 
It could be possible that something came up too late during KDE startup. The xrandr --listproviders only outputs info but only the call seems to be enough to recognize the dual monitor setup. Like the KDE display init was finished before the 2nd screen was visible...
 
fraxamo said:
If that line of code works for you when you run it manually then it might be worth adding it to your ~/.xinitrc to see if it also automatically fixes the issue for you whenever you start X.
Click to expand...
This one may be tricky, I think xrandr needs the X server running. But OP how are you starting KDE? Command line using the startx command or graphical login?

I think a "better" solution may be create a simple shell script with that line in it and make it a KDE autostart. That would work regardless of how you start KDE and you can move it around in the autostart list to make it work for you.
 
Thanks all! Good point on the order of what starts. Since I'm logging in with KDE (sddm?), I'll try a script with KDE autostart as soon as I can. Thanksgiving and all...
 
Something odd must be going on with the video card too. After some more trial and error, these steps consistently get both displays working:
  1. Put both KVMs on the FreeBSD system
  2. Boot up & log in
  3. Switch the HDMI cables between display port adapters
  4. Switch the display port adapters between display ports on the computer
  5. Open terminal and run xrandr --listproviders
Yeah, I didn't isolate what I was doing to get it to work. :-( That middle part seems weird. Okay, I can accept maybe the card take a bit to "warm up". But swapping the cables usually wakes up ports. Swapping just the adapters or just the cables did not do it. Makes no sense to me. But it is what it is, until I inherit another computer from someone.

Thanks again for everyone's help.
 
I missed the KVM part from the original post. My experience with monitors and KVMs has been "inconsistent", especially if you are mixing cable/port types. Usually a signal not getting distributed along all the KVM ports.

As a test, can you go directly from the FreeBSD system to the monitors (bypass the KVMs) and see what happens? It would simply give you a datapoint that the KVMs are creating/causing/affecting the problem.
 
I ran cables from the monitors directly to the HDMI->DisplayPort adapters and the same thing happened. So while one couldn't rule out the KVM as contributing, there is more to the issue then the KVM.

I hate to admit on a FreeBSD forum, I loaded Kubuntu to see what happens. I do have a bit of completist in me. The exact same behavior happens. The completist in me also wishes I had a direct HDMI->DisplayPort cable, so no adapter is in the chain as well. But I'm strapped for cash until after Christmas.

I do also have to say a great introduction to the FreeBSD community. :)
 
Could you post some info about your system; what is the output of the following commands?
freebsd-version -kru
pciconf -lv | grep -B4 -A1 display
sysctl hw.model hw.machine hw.ncpu
pkg info -g 'drm-*-kmod'
pkg info | grep nvidia
 
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