How do I get Mint to start whether a monitor is attached or not — with no use of the keyboard?

[jcollum]

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... 418_456375


I have a media PC (Kodi) attached to a TV. Sometimes I need to reboot it to deal with a process that has died or a power outage etc. But when I reboot it with the TV off it won't boot. This is very annoying.

I want the machine to boot up whether a monitor is attached or not. There are processes that need to start up whether the TV is there or not. Is this possible?

Since this is a media player it doesn't have a keyboard so running console commands to get the GUI up and running is obnoxious. It's set up to boot into Kodi (a media player). It's running Mint.

Tried this fix:

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$ cat /boot/config.txt
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

But it didn't work.

I see this in the boot config:

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 $ cat /boot/config-4.4.0-21-generic | grep HDMI
CONFIG_HDMI=y

Will setting that to 'n' work or will it hose my boot?

[jcollum]

Bump... still haven't solved this

[lsemmens]

I am unsure of how you have a problem, I've been running mint 18.5 and now mint 19 on my wife's video machine for months. I've just set it to auto logon. It is only connected to her TV and a mouse. If power goes off the machine is often re-started without the TV being on with no issues. Far less often than ever happened in Windows.

[gm10]

Yeah, same, never had a problem booting up Linux without a screen attached. Servers do it all the time. Maybe it's some weird setting in your UEFI/BIOS?

The other possibility is that we have a different definition of what "booting" actually means. It's conceivable that your media player won't start without an output, but that's about the player then, not Mint.

[jcollum]

No if it reboots when the TV is off it won't boot at all. When I turn the screen on I see a white cursor and nothing else.

I've seen posts on ubuntu forums about ubuntu not starting if no monitor is attached. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2331323 -- but that would require me to start the GUI with a keyboard, which defeats the purpose.

I'll look around in the BIOS. it's an MSI Cubi if you are curious.

[gm10]

No if it reboots when the TV is off it won't boot at all. When I turn the screen on I see a white cursor and nothing else.

Something needs to provide that cursor though, so unless your TV shows a cursor by default that means your Mint did boot, no? Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to confirm.

[jcollum]

Steps:

1. turn off receiver (PC -> Recv -> TV, both connections HDMI)
1. turn off PC
1. wait
1. turn on PC
1. wait
1. turn on receiver

Result: white block cursor on TV (https://i.imgur.com/U9uSEyC.jpg). Ctrl Alt F1 does nothing. Only way to get PC to respond is to turn it off. USB keyboard has power (num lock light)

There are no settings in the BIOS related to monitor being attached on power up. BIOS is Aptio 2.17.1246.

It sure looks like something is saying "don't boot if there's no display attached and -- based on the thread link above -- it seems like it's linux.

Also no one has addressed my question about `CONFIG_HDMI=y` up above.

[gm10]

Also no one has addressed my question about `CONFIG_HDMI=y` up above.

Because that's not a boot parameter, that file just tells you the flags that were used in compiling the kernel. You can re-compile your kernel without HDMI support if you don't need it, but I don't what that has got to do with anything?

Seeing that cursor am wondering if you configured a specific video output in the GRUB configuration - which, when missing, might prevent a successful boot (I never tried).

[jcollum]

> Seeing that cursor am wondering if you configured a specific video output in the GRUB configuration

Well if that's something I'd have to do after install the answer is no. It's a very vanilla Mint install.

[gm10]

> Seeing that cursor am wondering if you configured a specific video output in the GRUB configuration

Well if that's something I'd have to do after install the answer is no. It's a very vanilla Mint install.

Ok, wasn't that then, but I still think it's grub related. Try this:

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sudo sed -i s/quiet splash/nomodeset/ /etc/default/grub
sudo sed -i /console/s/#// /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub

[lsemmens]

That picture looks like you are only half way through the boot process where just the "progress bar" is showing. How long after you boot is this occurring? It might be worth looking at the boot logs to tell us how far through the process you get before it hangs.

[jcollum]

@gm10:

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media@mediaCube ~ $ sudo sed -i s/quiet splash/nomodeset/ /etc/default/grub
sed: -e expression #1, char 7: unterminated `s' command
media@mediaCube ~ $ sudo sed -i /console/s/#// /etc/default/grub
media@mediaCube ~ $ sudo update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Warning: Setting GRUB_TIMEOUT to a non-zero value when GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is set is no longer supported.
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-21-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-21-generic
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done
media@mediaCube ~ $ 

Concerned about this:

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unterminated `s' command

I tried this and the result was: no change, same white cursor.

[jcollum]

@lsemmens

The machine is not available for ssh when the boot fails and the boot logs appear to be cleaned up next time it boots, so I don't know how I can get this information.

This is what I have (trimmed for space):

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$ cat /var/log/boot.log |more 
Scanning for Btrfs filesystems
/dev/sda2: clean, 329461/3115056 files, 5177129/12455936 blocks
         Stopping LSB: Start NTP daemon...
[  OK  ] Stopped LSB: Start NTP daemon.
[  OK  ] Stopped LSB: Start NTP daemon.
         Starting LSB: Start NTP daemon...
[  OK  ] Started LSB: Start NTP daemon.
[  OK  ] Started Network Manager Wait Online.
[  OK  ] Reached target Network is Online.
...
[  OK  ] Started LSB: VirtualBox Linux Additions.
[  OK  ] Started LSB: daemon to balance interrupts for SMP systems.
[  OK  ] Started LSB: Speech Dispatcher.
[  OK  ] Started LSB: Load kernel modules needed to enable cpufreq scaling.
[  OK  ] Started LSB: Start xrdp and sesman daemons.
[  OK  ] Started LSB: Set the CPU Frequency Scaling governor to "ondemand".
         Starting LSB: set CPUFreq kernel parameters...
         Starting Hold until boot process finishes up...
         Starting Terminate Plymouth Boot Screen...
         

[gm10]

[ OK ] Started LSB: VirtualBox Linux Additions.

From what I understood you are not running in a virtual machine, so please remove these, those can definitely cause display issues. Run:

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sudo apt-get remove --purge virtualbox-guest*

Concerned about this:

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unterminated `s' command

And you should be. I forgot a backslash, sorry:

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sudo sed -i s/quiet\ splash/nomodeset/ /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub

Try a reboot again after that.

[jcollum]

Code: Select all

media@mediaCube ~ $ sudo sed -i s/quiet\ splash/nomodeset/ /etc/default/grub
media@mediaCube ~ $ sudo update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Warning: Setting GRUB_TIMEOUT to a non-zero value when GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is set is no longer supported.
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-21-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-21-generic
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done

Same result. White block cursor. Thanks for all the effort you are putting in here.

[jcollum]

Even worse than that, now it says

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Invalid video mode specification `text'.
Booting in blind mode

And won't output to the TV at all. I can ssh in though.

[gm10]

Even worse than that, now it says

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Invalid video mode specification `text'.
Booting in blind mode

Are you running an old grub version? This is was a bug that was supposed to have been fixed in 2.02-2ubuntu7. apt list grub2 to check your version.

And won't output to the TV at all. I can ssh in though.

But does it boot in successfully without the TV attached now though? Whether it outputs to it or not. Finding that out was the main point of the exercise.

You can revert the changes we made like this:

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sudo sed -i s/nomodeset/quiet\ splash/ /etc/default/grub
sudo sed  /console/s/^/#/ /etc/default/grub
sudo update-grub

[jcollum]

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$ apt list grub2
Listing... Done
grub2/xenial-updates 2.02~beta2-36ubuntu3.18 amd64

Right, it does boot.

I powered it down then booted it up with the monitor on. No changes to config. It booted to the GUI but for some reason Kodi doesn't have focus so it's not very useful as a media player. Kodi is running. I can alt tab to it but that means getting out the keyboard.

I'll revert the grub changes.

[gm10]

So much for LTS support, I hadn't realized xenial/Mint 18 wasn't getting the same bug fixes to grub as bionic.

Anyway, we've identified the problem to be with the kernel mode video driver that's causing this issue, maybe that helps you come up with a solution. Try a newer kernel, for example, or maybe the driver you are using has some boot options that can be set in this situation.in

You could also try a Mint 19 liveUSB where at least that GRUB2 text mode bug has been fixed and maybe something else that's contributing to the problem here.

[jcollum]

OK cool. Maybe I'll upgrade. Thanks a ton for the help.