In Ubuntu Xenial how to disable framebuffer switching?

Kriston · January 18, 2017

In Ubuntu Xenial how do we disable framebuffer switching and font switching?

My Orange Pi Plus 2e v1.1 has the usual problem with HDMI-to-DVI converters but it's unusual in this case because it's switching framebuffers and fonts.

The screen appears just fine during boot, but just after the message "Starting kernel..." the screen blanks and goes into power-saving poweroff with no return.

I've seen this before, and I have tried several things to prevent the dead screen. I tried editing /boot/armbianEnv.txt to contain these lines like I have on other SBCs like PINE A64 and older Orange Pi devices that solved this problem:

disp_mode=720p60

disp_dvi_compat=1

I took an extra step to edit /etc/default/console-setup to stop it from changing CHARMAP, CODESET, FONTFACE, FONTSIZE, and VIDEOMODE, but that didn't fix it, either.

I came to the conclusion that something else is changing it.

A few suspects were obvious:

systemctl disable keyboard-setup.service

systemctl disable setvtrgb.service

Disabling these did not work, either.

What is going on?

Here is a relevant section of my dmesg:

root@orangepiplus2e:~# dmesg |grep -i cons

[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: root=UUID=995d5ba0-dbbf-4d7b-988a-e1e63e190c6f rootwait rootfstype=ext4 console=tty1 console=ttyS0,115200 cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1 hdmi.audio=EDID:0 disp.screen0_output_mode=720p60 panic=10 consoleblank=0 enforcing=0 loglevel=1 ubootpart=767c056e-01 sunxi_ve_mem_reserve=0 sunxi_g2d_mem_reserve=0 sunxi_fb_mem_reserve=16

[ 0.000000] Console: colour dummy device 80x30

[ 0.000000] console [tty1] enabled

[ 0.549704] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 160x45

[ 0.567686] sw_console_setup()1233 - console setup baud 115200 parity n bits 8, flow n

[ 0.567827] console [ttyS0] enabled

[ 4.720404] systemd[1]: Started Dispatch Password Requests to Console Directory Watch.

[ 5.830842] systemd[1]: Starting Set console keymap...

[ 6.850128] systemd[1]: Started Set console keymap.

[ 10.310965] systemd[1]: Starting Set console font and keymap...

zador.blood.stained · January 18, 2017

What image exactly do you use?

Legacy H3 images are configured through h3disp utility (or by editing FEX files manually), kernel command line and armbianEnv.txt chenges won't have any effect, and display working prior to booting the kernel on latest images is normal since it is initialized by the u-boot using EDID data.