Can't rotate (Default) screen on Raspberry Pi3 running Manjaro with X11

Question

I’m running the latest version of Manjaro ARM i3 on a Raspberry Pi3 (Image: Raspberry Pi 4 I3 20.10). I can’t for the love of me get the screen to rotate. I recently switched from Manjaro Wayland to this version because of Synergy support.

What I tried:

• Using xrandr to rotate the screen. xrandr only sees a “Default” screen and when I try to rotate it I get the error:

  $ xrandr --output default --rotate inverted
  xrandr: output default cannot use rotation "inverted" reflection "none"
  

• Using ARandR to rotate the screen. This will show my desktop in the GUI tool but the options to Rotate are greyed out. My main screen shows up as 'Default' here to.
• Using the Raspberry PI config file at /boot/config.txt to set the rotation. This does also not work.

I’m running the Stock version with no extra software. Any tips on how to get the screen to rotate?

Answer 1

I eventually found a even better solution thanks to the user BashCrash over at the Manjaro Forum

The steps are as followed (with vc4-fkms-v3d enabled in the /boot/config.txt):

• Boot into Manjaro i3
• Open a terminal
• Go to to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d (cd /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d)
• Move the file 99-fbturbo.conf.d with mv 99-fbturbo.conf.d 99-fbturbo.conf.d.old
• Reboot

After the reboot you xrandr should list the correct outputs (HDMI-1 in my case). You can then rotate the screen using:

xrandr --output HDMI-1 --rotate left 

You can make this setting permanent by adding it to you .i3/config file. Add the following line:

exec xrandr --output HDMI-1 --rotate left

The trade off with the original method is that the screen will rotate after boot and login. More in depth explanation on potential trade-off's can be found here: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/i3-on-raspberry-pi-4-with-dual-monitors/20996/9

Answer 2

I was able to solve this by disabling the vc4-fkms-v3d drivers. You can do this using the following steps:

1. Open you config file at /boot/config.txt
2. Using a #, comment out the line: vc4-fkms-v3d
3. Add the rotation to the config like:

• display_rotate=1 - for 90 degree rotation
• display_rotate=2 - for 180 degree rotation
• display_rotate=3 - for 270 degree rotation

4. Reboot

Your screen should now be rotated. Please note that this disables the vc4-fkms-v3d video card drivers which could have other unforeseen effects. Also keep in mind that this is the case for a RPi3.