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Last reply by 09-26-2020 Solved
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2 Bronze

External Monitor not working. Ubuntu, nvidia

I'm having a precision 7530 with i7-8850H and NVIDIA Quadro P2000 and using ubuntu 18.04. Now after some time the external montior connected over displayport (displayport to hdmi cable, where the displayport goes into the laptop and the hdmi cable into the monitor) stopped working. I'm using this workstation at work with the TB18DC dock, where 2 external montiors are connected and work properly. But at home I do not have any dock and with the setup mentioned above the external monitor stopped working. It did work some months ago. During the time it worked and now I have done normal ubuntu software updates where also the bios-firmware has been updated to 1.5.2 (i'm not sure what version i've had before, was the first time i updated firmware after bought, so maybe 1.0.7?).

 

I have also installed the nvidia 390 driver.

 

xrandr says with connected displayport monitor:

 

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
eDP-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm
   1920x1080     60.03*+  60.01    59.97    59.96    59.93    48.02  
   1680x1050     59.95    59.88  
   1600x1024     60.17  
   1400x1050     59.98  
   1600x900      59.99    59.94    59.95    59.82  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1400x900      59.96    59.88  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1440x810      60.00    59.97  
   1368x768      59.88    59.85  
   1360x768      59.80    59.96  
   1280x800      59.99    59.97    59.81    59.91  
   1152x864      60.00  
   1280x720      60.00    59.99    59.86    59.74  
   1024x768      60.04    60.00  
   960x720       60.00  
   928x696       60.05  
   896x672       60.01  
   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  
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 

 

 

I have also tried the following:

  • installing lightdm and use it (no effect)
  • disable switchable graphics in bios (no effect)
  • downgrade firmware version-by-version till 1.2.5 (as it won't let me downgrade back to 1.0.7. no effect)
  • reset bios settings to default (no effect)
  • reinstalling nvidia-driver (no effect)
  • trying without any nvidia-driver (no effect)

 

I booted from a live ubuntu usb stick and without external montior it worked normally but with external monitor I got the following error message:

 

LrfKuUg.jpg

Any ideas how to get the monitor working? Thank!

Solution (1)

Accepted Solutions
2 Bronze

I got it working thanks to this mans hint at askubuntu forum:

I recently installed the nvidia-418 driver on my laptop which uses Ubuntu 18.04. At first the external monitor worked perfectly, but after I switched from power saving mode (sudo prime-select intel) back to performance mode (sudo prime-select nvidia), the second monitor was not detected anymore.

I discovered that prime-select writes a configuration file which causes the problem. It enables the nvidia-drm modeset option. You can simply undo the change made by prime-select by commenting out this option. It will not be reset, because prime-select only writes this file when it does not yet exists.

Open the file in your favorite editor (vim, nano, gedit, etc.).

sudo nano /lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-kms.conf

And comment out the the nvidia-drm modeset option.

# This file was generated by nvidia-prime
# Set value to 0 to disable modesetting
# options nvidia-drm modeset=1

Hope this also helps you and many others!


ps: It is completely normal that the second monitor is not detected in power saving mode when the connection is part of the nvidia graphics card.

 


 

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Dell Accepted Solution
Replies (15)
2 Bronze

I'm running into the same issue on my 7530.  Has this problem been solved?  Does Dell's ubuntu 18.04 LTS image support external monitors?  I installed 18.10 via desktop image from canonical.

2 Bronze

I got it working thanks to this mans hint at askubuntu forum:

I recently installed the nvidia-418 driver on my laptop which uses Ubuntu 18.04. At first the external monitor worked perfectly, but after I switched from power saving mode (sudo prime-select intel) back to performance mode (sudo prime-select nvidia), the second monitor was not detected anymore.

I discovered that prime-select writes a configuration file which causes the problem. It enables the nvidia-drm modeset option. You can simply undo the change made by prime-select by commenting out this option. It will not be reset, because prime-select only writes this file when it does not yet exists.

Open the file in your favorite editor (vim, nano, gedit, etc.).

sudo nano /lib/modprobe.d/nvidia-kms.conf

And comment out the the nvidia-drm modeset option.

# This file was generated by nvidia-prime
# Set value to 0 to disable modesetting
# options nvidia-drm modeset=1

Hope this also helps you and many others!


ps: It is completely normal that the second monitor is not detected in power saving mode when the connection is part of the nvidia graphics card.

 


 

Dell Accepted Solution

Spoiler
pomm0 solutions works.
Thankyou

I can't believe this worked, but it did! Thank you! Another thing to note for 18.04 users is that monitors connected over USB-C are supported from kernel 4.19+, so you should use the latest kernel (it was just updated to 5.0.x).

I create an account here just to say thank you, this is exactly what solved my problem. Thanks!

I have the same problem with mi Precision 7530.

It is the same for me: there is no mentioned file in 

/lib/modprobe.d/

 and nvidia-settings is not able to save a custom config file

Same problem here... this solution doesn't work for me neither.

I have same issue, the file does not exist. Have you found a solution?

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