Unreliable display in Armbian and Debian

[ksattic]

Hi all, I have a RockPro64 4GB and I've tried Armbian, Debian and also a custom RISC OS build and I'm having display issues with each. I've tried different brand SD cards, different HDMI cables and different monitors.

Often when I boot into Linux, there is no display at all but DHCP is working. Sometimes the display goes black even if it comes up at boot. 

Anything I should try?

[PakoSt]

What's your display?
For Debian - oh, I'm sure it will want 1080p and be very temperamental if the resolution is anything but that.

Not sure if Armbian images have the patch-set for HDMI that would enable up-to 4k@30.

Just had success with getting that patch-set from LibreELEC and moving it to Manjaro - now all 3 of my displays are functional.

[ksattic]

1080p. I have two Lenovo monitors (one is 4K, the other is 2560x1440) and one Viewsonic (1680x1050) and often the display doesn't come up at all when I boot when attached to either monitor. If I boot unattached, then I will never get display output (I'm assuming that this is an EDID issue). Without EDID I would expect a default resolution like 1024x768.

Do you recommend that I try Manjaro then?

[PakoSt]

Update:
Scratch that and try directly LibreELEC's image to see it will work for you: https://libreelec.tv/downloads/rockchip/

Original:
You will see the same issue with all of them unless the patch-set from LibreELEC is in use.

The patch-set in question: https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.t...chip.patch

I'm not as familiar with Armbian to see if the patch-set is already in use (I recall it was mentioned in their forum at one point but that was for rk3328).

You could try Manjaro with the following kernel that I've modified to see if it works for your setup: https://github.com/psstoyanov/linux-rockchip-hdmi-fixes
(dm me if you prefer already generated Manjaro package instead of building it yourself)

If it is working fine then apply the patch-set to your preferred distro.