[Solved] New MacOS Catalina breaks DisplayLink

[silverscreen]

Originally Posted by lspintzyk

Hi, silverscreen

We experience macOS kernel cache issues. Most likely old incompatible kernel extension is still loaded.
Can you help us to verify our suspicion?

Please do following experiment:
- Uninstall DisplayLink software
- Reboot
- What is the output of command(empty output means it is OK):
kextstat | grep DisplayLink

Give us an update, and follow that article if "kextstat | grep DisplayLink" returns non empty output.
2. Please follow steps from that article:
https://support.displaylink.com/know...lay-is-working

After uninstalling and a restart, the output is not empty:

kextstat | grep DisplayLink
43 0 0xffffff7f8276c000 0x10000 0x10000 com.displaylink.driver.DisplayLinkDriver (4.3 (124)) 21BA08D2-055E-380E-B526-1798079CF68D <42 13 6 5 3>

It seems indeed to be a cache issue. How to burst the cache?

[lspintzyk]

Great!

You need to follow the article:
https://support.displaylink.com/know...lay-is-working

tl.dr
1. Uninstall DisplayLink driver first
2. go to recovery mode
3. invoke kextcache command as described in that article.

[silverscreen]

Originally Posted by lspintzyk

Great!

You need to follow the article:
https://support.displaylink.com/know...lay-is-working

tl.dr
1. Uninstall DisplayLink driver first
2. go to recovery mode
3. invoke kextcache command as described in that article.

Based on the title I thought this KB article was not relevant, but it fixed the first problem. The extension is now loaded and I have a mirror of my main monitor.

How to switch this from a mirror to a extended screen (as I had before)? Reconnecting the USB doesn't fix the issue. The Airplay icon is not visible and the only option for AirPlay Display is Off.

[lspintzyk]

Originally Posted by silverscreen

Based on the title I thought this KB article was not relevant, but it fixed the first problem. The extension is now loaded and I have a mirror of my main monitor.

How to switch this from a mirror to a extended screen (as I had before)? Reconnecting the USB doesn't fix the issue. The Airplay icon is not visible and the only option for AirPlay Display is Off.

Do you have latest 5.2.1 DisplayLink driver installed?
https://www.displaylink.com/downloads/file?id=1433

You can easily switch to extend mode in "System Preferences->Displays->Arrangement" where you have to untick "Mirror Displays" option.

[silverscreen]

Originally Posted by lspintzyk

Do you have latest 5.2.1 DisplayLink driver installed?
https://www.displaylink.com/downloads/file?id=1433

You can easily switch to extend mode in "System Preferences->Displays->Arrangement" where you have to untick "Mirror Displays" option.

I did a couple of uninstall / installs with 5.2.1 beta 2. Mirror displays is unchecked. AirPlay Display says only off in the select list. I see the Air Play icon and that also says off.

I see the two displays extended (directly connected) and the third (DisplayLink) as mirror. No option to extend the DisplayLink monitor.

I have the following setup: 1-2-3. Where 1 is the display link and 2 and 3 are connected to the Mac Mini. Playing around on the arrangement tab:

• When the menubar is on 1, then all displays are extended.
• When the menubar is on 2, then 1 is a mirror of 2.
• When the menubar is on 3, then 1 is a mirror of 3.

I also noticed that I can move my mouse cursor around on the mirrored screen, like it's a actual extended display, but I cannot click on anything! I want the menubar on 2 because this one is directly on front of me.

Any idea?

[lspintzyk]

Originally Posted by silverscreen

I did a couple of uninstall / installs with 5.2.1 beta 2. Mirror displays is unchecked. AirPlay Display says only off in the select list. I see the Air Play icon and that also says off.

I see the two displays extended (directly connected) and the third (DisplayLink) as mirror. No option to extend the DisplayLink monitor.

I have the following setup: 1-2-3. Where 1 is the display link and 2 and 3 are connected to the Mac Mini. Playing around on the arrangement tab:

• When the menubar is on 1, then all displays are extended.
• When the menubar is on 2, then 1 is a mirror of 2.
• When the menubar is on 3, then 1 is a mirror of 3.

I also noticed that I can move my mouse cursor around on the mirrored screen, like it's a actual extended display, but I cannot click on anything! I want the menubar on 2 because this one is directly on front of me.

Any idea?

Try reset screen preferences:
sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
rm /Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver.*

If does not help, please gather logs using that tool and raise bug here:
https://support.displaylink.com/
You can gather logs using that tool:
https://www.displaylink.com/downloads/file?d=66

[steelvoltage]

I was able to fix the issue this morning.

Steps that I took:

Uninstalled the displaylink driver.
Shutdown my mac and entered recovery mode.
Opened up the terminal and ran:

kextcache -i /Volumes/Local

Note: Local is the name of my disk. Yours may vary.
The command returned a string/id/guid (not sure what it entails), but there was no error message.

reboot

After it booted back up, I opened up terminal again.

kextcache | grep DisplayLink

The grep returned nothing, which now I knew the driver was gone completely. Grep is a regular expression search, meaning it returning nothing is what we want here as we cleared the cache.

I installed the beta driver and it rebooted.

Afterward, success!

[ver0n]

Originally Posted by lspintzyk

Great!

You need to follow the article:
https://support.displaylink.com/know...lay-is-working

tl.dr
1. Uninstall DisplayLink driver first
2. go to recovery mode
3. invoke kextcache command as described in that article.

At first the new beta driver did not work, but after doing the kextcache, now 5.2.1 beta works

Thanks you

[Bartonyn]

Originally Posted by lspintzyk

Great!

You need to follow the article:
https://support.displaylink.com/know...lay-is-working

tl.dr
1. Uninstall DisplayLink driver first
2. go to recovery mode
3. invoke kextcache command as described in that article.

Tried to do it this way, but terminal command is not available in recovery mode on my mac which runs catalina.

[Bartonyn]

Originally Posted by Bartonyn

Tried to do it this way, but terminal command is not available in recovery mode on my mac which runs catalina.

After the unsuccessful messing with the recovery mode, decided to delete again the software and download again and reinstall, this will be like the 5 time reinstalling last version, and for some reason it works, finally. Nothing I have tried worked, but uninstalling and installing the software did the trick I guess, and that is the latest version available for display link.