Using Displaylink on Arch Linux.
If, like me, your company has chosen DisplayLink to connect to your big fat 29" monitor, or to connect to TV in meeting room, and you use linux you are probably not very (at all) pleased with that choice !
In my team, 95% of the devs are using Ubuntu as there linux distrib and the Displaylink driver is not really working.
I’ve switch to Arch Linux this week end ! (1st May is off in France !), installed all my tools and was happy this morning comming to work and show my nice new linux install and realized I’ve forgot that awesome piece of technology that is DisplayLink !
So I looked into Arch docs, and (to my amazement) found some docs on DisplayLink (Thanks guys you rock!), here you go:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DisplayLink
Being new to Arch, the doc was assuming some arch basics I was missing… So for those like me, here is what I did:
first install the package “base devel”, it will install GCC and other things to compile and build things.
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel
second thing to prepare, install linux kernel headers for your kernel (require to build module according to your kernel)
uname -r
will display your kernel version, for me it is 4.9, use pacman -Ss linux headers to find the package
sudo pacman -S core/linux49-headers
preparation is nearly done, need to install one last dependency, evdi. In fact evdi is a dependency of this displaylink AUR.
download the evdi AUR from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/evdi/ (evdi.tar.gz)
untar it
tar zvf evdi.tar.gz
build and install it
cd evdi
makepkg -si
Same thing with the displaylink AUR download the displayLink package from https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/displaylink/ AUR project (displaylink.tar.gz)
untar it
tar zvf displaylink.tar.gz
build and install it (makepkg is a tool to build AUR package)
cd displaylink
makepkg -si
udl is the kernel module that manage displaylink V1 driver, which the current driver use as a base. activate udl kernel module and start displaylink service,
sudo modprobe udl
sudo systemctl start diplaylink.service
plug your usb displaylink (powered…) cable into your computer (into an usb plug for example, that can be handy) wait a few seconds (less than 30 seconds…) and check your providers :
xrandr --listproviders
you should see 2 providers
Providers: number : 2
Provider 0: id: 0x45 cap: 0xb, Source Output, Sink Output, Sink Offload crtcs: 4 outputs: 2 associated providers: 1 name:Intel
Provider 1: id: 0x14d cap: 0x2, Sink Output crtcs: 1 outputs: 1 associated providers: 1 name:modesetting
associate the new provider (modesetting) output to the Intel provide input… (awesome !!! don’t ask me why… can’t yet grasp the whole concept)
xrandr --setprovideroutputsource 1 0
look what’s your xrandr current output look like
xrandr --current
you should see 2 differents possible screens:
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 2560 x 1440, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 340mm x 190mm
1920x1080 60.02*+
1400x1050 59.98
1600x900 60.00
1280x1024 60.02
1280x960 60.00
1368x768 60.00
1280x720 60.00
1024x768 60.00
1024x576 60.00
960x540 60.00
800x600 60.32 56.25
864x486 60.00
640x480 59.94
720x405 60.00
640x360 60.00
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1-1 connected 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm
2560x1440 59.95 +
2048x1152 60.00
1920x1200 59.88
1920x1080 60.00 50.00 59.94 30.00 25.00 24.00 29.97 23.98
1600x1200 60.00
1680x1050 59.95
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1200x960 59.99
1152x864 75.00
1280x720 60.00 50.00 59.94
1024x768 75.03 60.00
800x600 75.00 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
848x480 60.00
720x480 60.00 59.94
640x480 75.00 60.00 59.94
720x400 70.08
1280x1024 (0x106) 108.000MHz +HSync +VSync
h: width 1280 start 1328 end 1440 total 1688 skew 0 clock 63.98KHz
v: height 1024 start 1025 end 1028 total 1066 clock 60.02Hz
1024x768 (0x10a) 65.000MHz -HSync -VSync
h: width 1024 start 1048 end 1184 total 1344 skew 0 clock 48.36KHz
v: height 768 start 771 end 777 total 806 clock 60.00Hz
800x600 (0x10d) 40.000MHz +HSync +VSync
h: width 800 start 840 end 968 total 1056 skew 0 clock 37.88KHz
v: height 600 start 601 end 605 total 628 clock 60.32Hz
800x600 (0x10e) 36.000MHz +HSync +VSync
h: width 800 start 824 end 896 total 1024 skew 0 clock 35.16KHz
v: height 600 start 601 end 603 total 625 clock 56.25Hz
640x480 (0x110) 25.175MHz -HSync -VSync
h: width 640 start 656 end 752 total 800 skew 0 clock 31.47KHz
v: height 480 start 490 end 492 total 525 clock 59.94Hz
here we see eDP1 is my laptop screen (don’t shut it down… would be a bit stressfull right?) and the DVI-I-1-1 which is my displaylink connected screen. the * sign indicate the active display
let’s activate our displaylink screen ! mirror your display (my favorite to present things to an audiance):
xrandr --output eDP1 --auto --primary --output DVI-I-1-1 --auto --same-as eDP1
shutting down that display
xrandr --output eDP1 --auto --output DVI-I-1-1 --off
extended your display to the right of your current display:
xrandr --newmode "3840x2160_30.00" 338.75 3840 4080 4488 5136 2160 2163 2168 2200 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode DP1 "3840x2160_30.00"
xrandr --output eDP1 --auto --primary --output DP1 --mode 3840x2160_30.00 --right-of eDP1 --rate 30
you can customize the position replacing the --right-of with either of :
--left-of
--above
--below
For myself I’ve created a few zsh function that handles this for me :)
Hope it helps !
Once I get the disqus plugin to work in Hugo, hopefully you will be able to give me some feedback.