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    Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

    Boot without monitor

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Help and Support
    displayhdmiblank
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    • R
      Roken
      last edited by Roken

      I have a 4 Pi cluster, 3x 3B+ and my retropi, a plain old 3B. retro is the only one with connected keyboard, mouse, game controller and, importantly, HDMI cable. The HDMI cable travels through an HDMI switch (it's sharing the monitor with my desktop).

      I rarely shut the Pi down (honestly, for the power it uses, why bother), but if my desktop is running, and I'm using it, after maintenance and, e.g. a kernel update. or just something went wrong, I reboot Retro via ssh.

      Here's the issue. If I don't switch the monitor to the Pi before I hit enter after issuing sudo reboot, or sudo shutdown -r now, then it will boot, but no ES (and in fact, when I switch the HDMI to the Pi it constantly cycles between analog/HDMI - meaning it has no signal).

      If I switch the display first, and then hit enter, it's fine.

      EDIT:I should add, retro is running when ES fails (ssh still works), just no display output.

      I'm assuming that it's attempting to read EDID information which, if the display is not the active display, it can't find.

      Is there a way to force retropie to boot with the defined HDMI output and resolution without me having to make the display active during the process? If it's just an xorg.conf tweak, I'm happy with that (long time Linux user exclusively and not scared of messing).

      KN4THXK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KN4THXK
        KN4THX @Roken
        last edited by

        @roken Try adding these lines to /boot/config.txt

        hdmi_force_hotplug=1
        hdmi_drive=2

        "If you're gonna play the Game Boy, You gotta learn to play it right" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYLGl92ETNQ

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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