Ubuntu 19.04 and DisplayLink Driver

[adin]

Originally Posted by rick_pri

For me, I would see the DisplayLink connected screens freeze and then I would unplug via usb and plug back in again, and then I'd have to run an alias which I've created from ARandR to fix my screen layout.

What I've found is that this always happend earlier in the day and it was happening when the network was very busy (backups being uploaded to the NAS). Since I've switched to plugging in the network cable directly into my machine that has resolved this issue for me. I don't particularly use the USB ports on my device, but I suspect heavy USB port usage could also have a similar impact.

In my case, when the screen freezes there is no coming back but a hard shutdown. Unplugging the dock doesn't do anything. The laptop's screen is still frozen, and there is no way to see if the inputs are coming through. I checked the logs, but I can't identify anything related to the displaylink since I don't know what to look for.

[rick_pri]

Originally Posted by adin

In my case, when the screen freezes there is no coming back but a hard shutdown. Unplugging the dock doesn't do anything. The laptop's screen is still frozen, and there is no way to see if the inputs are coming through. I checked the logs, but I can't identify anything related to the displaylink since I don't know what to look for.

Can you

Alt+F2

then type 'r' and hit enter? You can't see it but this will refresh GDM for you (That's if you're using that desktop manager)
If that does nothing can you

Ctrl+F2

into a console? Then you might be able reload your display manager (although this will kill your current session) so I think that you can reload the DisplayLink service itself first with something like

sudo service displaylink-driver restart

.

I've found that sometimes the display manager would have issues with not displaying onto my internal screen (it would still act as if the display was disabled - as I used to have my laptop lid closed whilst using the other monitors.) There may be something in the

/var/log/syslog

.

[rick_pri]

I can confirm that my issue on startup where it looked like my machine was frozen has gone with the latest release and has been fine since release day (now my machine boots just as I would expect it to, without the ~5min delay in startup and the requirement to do the CTRL+F2, CTRL+F1 dance to get the GDM screen to appear.)

Let's hope that it continues to work with the 19.10 release later this year (I tend to do day 1 updates, and sometimes I jump onto the beta/RC releases if I have a particularly annoying issue which is fixed in the newer version.)