Dual Monitor Setup Issues with Leap 15

English Hardware
1

I have an HP Pavilion g6 Notebook PC with an AMD A8-4500M APU with Radeon™ HD Graphics. LSHW shows a Radeon HD 7640G graphics card. I also have an Acer X233H monitor that I would like to use to extend my desktop. If I boot my system in Windows 10, both monitors are recognized and work, and I can arrange them normally, so I am comfortable that I do not have a hardware problem. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get this to work in Opensuse Leap 15.0.

If I plug in the Acer monitor into the VGA connection under Opensuse, my laptop screen goes blank, and the Acer displays what appears to be a normal desktop. If I try to open an application, however, I can see it slide from the task bar off to the left side of the monitor screen where it disappears and cannot be accessed. Because of this, I cannot run diagnostics with both monitors connected.

Without the second monitor, I get the following output from lshw:

[FONT=DejaVu Sans, sans-serif]linux-anzn:~ # lshw -c video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Trinity [Radeon HD 7640G]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
resources: irq:36 memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:3000(size=256) memory:f0300000-
f033ffff memory:c0000-dffff[/FONT]

which seems to show I am using the radeon driver.

I would like to try amdgpu, but have not been able to properly configure my system to use it. I have reviewed a large number of posts on this subject and tried many of them without success.

I’ve tried the following to install amdgpu

[FONT=DejaVu Sans, sans-serif]linux-anzn:~ # zypper install xf86-video-amdgpu kernel-firmware
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
‘kernel-firmware’ is already installed.
No update candidate for ‘kernel-firmware-20190118-lp150.2.12.1.noarch’. The highest available version is already installed.
‘xf86-video-amdgpu’ is already installed.
No update candidate for ‘xf86-video-amdgpu-18.0.1-lp150.1.1.x86_64’. The highest available version is already installed.
Resolving package dependencies…

Nothing to do.[/FONT]

so I believe this driver is already installed. I put these items in my Yast Boot Loader Kernel Parameters: amdgpu.si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.cki_support=1 radeon.cki_support=0. When I reboot, I still show the radeon driver as listed above.

I am hoping someone can guide me through resolving this issue. Thanks in advance.

2

Hi
You card is only supported with the radeon kernel driver, no amdgpu support for Northern Island cards…

What desktop environment are you using, as there should be a DE specific tool to setup the monitors?

Are you connecting the external monitor via VGA or HDMI, when it’s connected, can you show the output from;


xrandr
3

The Radeon DDX is provided on openSUSE by the rpm xf86-video-ati. It’s old technology. I suggest you start by trying newer technology, the “modesetting” DDX, which is provided by the X server package that is required to have any working X at all (ie, already installed). There’s more detailed explanation on https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Nomodeset:Work_Around_Graphic_Upgrade&_Installation_Obstacles but basically you should just try removing xf86-video-ati and restarting X or PC to see what happens. If it doesn’t help, it’s easy enough to reinstall. While modesetting is in use, all those support= cmdline parameters may be inert.

You might give a try using xrandr to designate the laptop display as primary, which hopefully would prevent blanking when the Acer is on. Output from xrandr will show you the output name of the (“connected”) laptop display, likely eDP-1. Whatever it’s called, do like so:

xrandr --output eDP-1 --primary

in an Xterm or Konsole. It if fails to help, it might be necessary to have it run as X starts, which I do by putting a mini-script containing it only into some file of your creation into /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/.

inxi -Gxx

run from an XTerm or Konsole or equivalent will report all video drivers in use, kernel, DDX ,and higher level. Inxi is probably not installed, but an ancient version of it is in 15.0 repos. Latest version 3.0.3x can be installed from the TW rpm, or as upstream recommends, from upstream. Updating using the -U switch updates it from upstream to latest version, but is disabled by the openSUSE packager. The disabling can be overridden via creating a file /etc/inxi.conf containing “B_ALLOW_UPDATE=true”.

If you are using a WM or DE that lacks its own multiple display configurator, give arandr a try.

4

I am using the KDE desktop. Displays is the setup tool. I am connecting the external monitor through VGA. Here is my xrandr output. Note that this is with the second monitor disconnected since I cannot see the output from any application when the second monitor is connected.


linux-ep5r:~ # xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 16384 x 16384
LVDS connected primary 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1366x768      60.07*+  40.04  
   1280x720      59.97  
   1152x768      59.95  
   1024x768      59.95  
   800x600       59.96  
   848x480       59.94  
   720x480       59.94  
   640x480       59.94  
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

[/QUOTE]

Thanks.

5

I believe my display is LVDS, and it already seems to be designated as primary. Here is the xrandr output with only one monitor connected. I will look to install the DDX you recommend and try again with both monitors if the display works.I have also deleted fx86-video-ati. I’ll let you know how that worked.


linux-ep5r:~ # xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 16384 x 16384
LVDS connected primary 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1366x768      60.07*+  40.04  
   1280x720      59.97  
   1152x768      59.95  
   1024x768      59.95  
   800x600       59.96  
   848x480       59.94  
   720x480       59.94  
   640x480       59.94  
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Here is the inxi output:


linux-ep5r:~ # inxi -Gxx
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Trinity [Radeon HD 7640G]
           bus-ID: 00:01.0 chip-ID: 1002:9903
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.6
           drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1366x768@60.07hz
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD ARUBA (DRM 2.50.0 / 4.12.14-lp150.12.48-default, LLVM 5.0.1)
           version: 4.3 Mesa 18.0.2 (compat-v: 3.0) Direct Render: Yes

Thanks.

6

Each trailing CODE is supposed to have / between and C, a result of selecting the content to be enclosed in code tags, then clicking the #] button above the input area. :slight_smile:

7

I found something online about the radeon driver only using HMDI and DVI ports without a special command - Option “ZaphodHeads” “VGA-0” - for VGA (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Multihead_setup). I connected my monitor with an HMDI cable instead of the VGA and all is working properly. There goes 10 days of my life I will never get back. If I can figure out how, I will mark this as resolved.

8

We don’t generally do that here, but you’re welcome to reflect that in the title when making a final reply.