Bug 1163758 - External displays on Dell docking station are not recognized with kernel 3.17
Summary: External displays on Dell docking station are not recognized with kernel 3.17
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: kernel
Version: 21
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Kernel Maintainer List
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-11-13 12:52 UTC by Frans-Jan van Steenbeek
Modified: 2015-12-02 16:31 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-12-02 04:57:37 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


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Description Frans-Jan van Steenbeek 2014-11-13 12:52:16 UTC
User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/38.0.2125.122 Safari/537.36
Build Identifier: 

After updating to kernel 3.17.2-200 on Fedora 20, the display attached to my docking station are no longer recognized. Rebooting with 3.16.7 'fixes' the problem.

Some googling and debugging leads me to suspect the updated Intel i915 driver to be the culprit, at least in combination with the current xorg-x11-drv-intel (2.21.15-7), specifically the new DP MST support. It could well be that this bug needs to be reported at the xorg-x11-drv-intel component, but I'm not sure.

I have little clue on how to debug this, and the only machine I have available that experiences this trouble is the company laptop.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install kernel 3.17
2. Boot kernel 3.17
3. Connect to docking station
Actual Results:  
No external displays are recognized.

Expected Results:  
External displays attached to the docking station show up and are usable.

Comment 1 Stefan Albaum 2014-11-21 09:32:12 UTC
This bug also affects Thinkpad docking stations. After docking of a Thinkpad T440s on a ThinkPad Pro Dock no monitors are recognized with kernel 3.17.2 (and also 3.17.3). A complete reboot fixes the problem temporarily. Everything is working as expected with kernel 3.16.7.

Comment 2 Frans-Jan van Steenbeek 2014-11-21 09:39:10 UTC
Yes, a reboot while docked will recognize the external display(s). Afterwards, un-docking the laptop while running will crash X. A reboot is then again needed to recognize the external display(s).

Similar behaviour is observed when the laptop wakes up in a different setting than it went to sleep in (I would crash as well, TBH, but a laptop should be used to this), but not when the laptop is re-docked before waking up.

Possibly related: while running 3.17.2 and being docked, my external display will black out at irregular intervals for a second or two. Annoyingly, there is nothing I could find in dmesg or the logs that relates to this.

Comment 3 Daniel 2014-11-27 14:45:00 UTC
The above mentioned bugs also show up on a Thinkpad W540 with kernel 3.17.3-200.fc20.x86_64 or 3.17.2-200.fc20.x86_64, 
and were absent with kernel 3.16.7-200.fc20.x86_64.  The doccking station 
is not necessary

Comment 4 Daniel 2014-11-27 15:04:08 UTC
(In reply to Daniel from comment #3)
> The above mentioned bugs also show up on a Thinkpad W540 with kernel
> 3.17.3-200.fc20.x86_64 or 3.17.2-200.fc20.x86_64, 
> and were absent with kernel 3.16.7-200.fc20.x86_64.  The doccking station 
> is not necessary

Sorry I wanted to say "The docking station *is* necessary" for the bug to show up.  To test this I connected 2 external monitors directly to the laptop, 
not to the docking station.  When the docking station is connected, 
the two monitors turn on and the laptop screen stays black.  
Without docking station the 3 screens turn on.

Comment 5 Georg Müller 2015-01-27 08:23:40 UTC
I don't know if this is related or a new bug:

I have a similar issue with my Dell Latitude E7440. When attaching the laptop to the dock, the external monitor stays blank (kernel 3.18.3-201.fc21.x86_64, but I had the issue with previous kernels too).

I can activate it by calling xrandr from the command line.

The first call looks like this:

$ xrandr 
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 309mm x 173mm
   1920x1080     60.05*+
   1400x1050     59.98  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32    56.25  
   640x480       59.94  
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)


But a second call right after this one shows the external monitor:

$ xrandr 
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 309mm x 173mm
   1920x1080     60.05*+
   1400x1050     59.98  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1024x768      60.00  
   800x600       60.32    56.25  
   640x480       59.94  
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1-1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
   1920x1080     60.00 +
   1600x900      59.98  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      75.08    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    60.32  
   640x480       75.00    60.00  
   720x400       70.08  
DP1-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)



The display is not activated automatically, but after this, I can activate it via xrandr by calling

$ xrandr --output DP1-1 --right-of eDP1 --auto

Comment 6 Fedora Kernel Team 2015-02-24 16:21:18 UTC
*********** MASS BUG UPDATE **************

We apologize for the inconvenience.  There is a large number of bugs to go through and several of them have gone stale.  Due to this, we are doing a mass bug update across all of the Fedora 20 kernel bugs.

Fedora 20 has now been rebased to 3.18.7-100.fc20.  Please test this kernel update (or newer) and let us know if you issue has been resolved or if it is still present with the newer kernel.

If you have moved on to Fedora 21, and are still experiencing this issue, please change the version to Fedora 21.

If you experience different issues, please open a new bug report for those.

Comment 7 Frans-Jan van Steenbeek 2015-02-26 15:30:12 UTC
The behaviour described by Georg in #5 is still very much present. For me, at times (non-deterministic) a reboot or a kill of X is necessary since the desktop freezes, most of the times a switch between X and ttyX before calling xrandr fixes the issue.

Waking up the laptop in the dock *never* gives me the expected behaviour, regardless of the state in which the laptop went to sleep. I still have the feeling this is related to MST.

Comment 8 Daniel 2015-02-26 16:38:17 UTC
(In reply to Fedora Kernel Team from comment #6)
> *********** MASS BUG UPDATE **************
> 

In Fedora 21 with all the 3.18 kernels the bug and similar screen related bugs  show up in rather hard to predict situations (Thinkpad w540).  Typically when switching to different screens, with or without docking station, or when waking up from sleep state the screen can stay black. Sometimes a console can be started, both in other cases everything is frozen.   It gets worse with newer kernels in the sense that I need to hard reboot more often.   The last reliable kernels for multiple displays with this laptop were 3.16.

Comment 9 Fedora Kernel Team 2015-04-28 18:28:28 UTC
*********** MASS BUG UPDATE **************

We apologize for the inconvenience.  There is a large number of bugs to go through and several of them have gone stale.  Due to this, we are doing a mass bug update across all of the Fedora 21 kernel bugs.

Fedora 21 has now been rebased to 3.19.5-200.fc21.  Please test this kernel update (or newer) and let us know if you issue has been resolved or if it is still present with the newer kernel.

If you have moved on to Fedora 22, and are still experiencing this issue, please change the version to Fedora 22.

If you experience different issues, please open a new bug report for those.

Comment 10 Frans-Jan van Steenbeek 2015-04-28 18:39:05 UTC
Kernel 3.19 did not change the behaviour.

Symptoms I'm still experiencing:
-Docking (or waking the laptop in-dock) does not result in the external screens being enabled. I can enable them via kscreen.
- Compositing is sometimes quircky with weird artefacts, switching to a console tty and back fixes that.
- GPU tasks (like rendering a PDF via Okular, opening the kscreen display settings or applying different display settings) freezes the desktop for a while, then returns to normal behaviour (not *quite* sure if this is actually related, I changed displays somewhere during 3.18). Regular compositing or WebGL rendering doesn't behave like this.

Comment 11 Daniel 2015-04-29 09:01:28 UTC
With kernel 3.19.5-200.fc21.x86_64 /F21) the same erratic behavior is obtained.  
Typically (Lenovo w540) when restarting on the dock from sleep state the external screens stay black.  Using the KDE screen configurator the extrenal screens are randomly positioned and off. Switching then on may or may not restart them after repositioning them next to the laptop screen.  Sometimes only a full reboot bring the external screen on.

Comment 12 Fedora End Of Life 2015-11-04 11:06:47 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 21 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 21. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version'
of '21'.

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Comment 13 Fedora End Of Life 2015-12-02 04:57:44 UTC
Fedora 21 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2015-12-01. Fedora 21 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

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