[HP Elitebook Folio 9470m] Screen rotates upside-down when laptop is not flat

[wastrel]

HP Elitebook Folio 9470m. This system is not a tablet or convertible, and does not have a touchscreen.

If the laptop is sitting flat during boot, the display orientation is normal.

If the laptop is not sitting flat during boot, or if it is moved out of flat, the display rotates and the orientation it rotates to is inverted upside-down.

This happens at the login screen as well as after login.

This laptop should really never have the screen rotate in the first place, as it's not a tablet or convertible, but in the event that rotation is happening it shouldn't be upside-down.

I have locked the rotation in gnome shell and in the login screen using the rotation lock button in the respective system menus. It would be nice if there was a system-wide setting & this didn't need to be done on a per-user basis.

This gsettings command will also lock the gnome-shell rotation:

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.touchscreen orientation-lock true

However the above key doesn't affect the login screen, which has its own separate rotation button in its own version of the system menu.

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Release: 18.04
Codename: bionic
$ apt-cache policy gdm3
gdm3:
  Installed: 3.28.0-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 3.28.0-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 3.28.0-0ubuntu1 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
$ apt-cache policy gnome-shell
gnome-shell:
  Installed: 3.28.1-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 3.28.1-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 3.28.1-0ubuntu2 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gdm3 3.28.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-20.21-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sat Apr 28 09:17:35 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-04-27 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Beta amd64 (20180404)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gdm3
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you give the output of those commands?
 $ G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all /usr/sbin/iio-sensor-proxy
 $ udevadm info --export-db | grep iio

[wastrel (wastrel)]

$ G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all /usr/sbin/iio-sensor-proxy
** (process:2669): DEBUG: 18:42:21.879: iio-sensor-proxy is already running, or it cannot own its D-Bus name. Verify installation.
$ udevadm info --export-db | grep iio
E: SYSTEMD_WANTS=iio-sensor-proxy.service
E: SYSTEMD_WANTS=iio-sensor-proxy.service
E: SYSTEMD_WANTS=iio-sensor-proxy.service
$

$ service iio-sensor-proxy status
● iio-sensor-proxy.service - IIO Sensor Proxy service
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/iio-sensor-proxy.service; static; vendor
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2018-04-29 18:40:49 EDT; 1min 59s ago
 Main PID: 2568 (iio-sensor-prox)
    Tasks: 3 (limit: 4915)
   CGroup: /system.slice/iio-sensor-proxy.service
           └─2568 /usr/sbin/iio-sensor-proxy

Apr 29 18:40:49 wastrel-laptop systemd[1]: Starting IIO Sensor Proxy service...
Apr 29 18:40:49 wastrel-laptop systemd[1]: Started IIO Sensor Proxy service.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

" ** (process:2669): DEBUG: 18:42:21.879: iio-sensor-proxy is already running, or it cannot own its D-Bus name. Verify installation."

can you stop the active instance and try again?

[wastrel (wastrel)]

Output is attached.

I started with the laptop sitting open, keyboard flat
lifted so the keyboard was facing me
flat
keyboard facing away from me
flat
keyboard facing to the right (left side lifted)
flat
keyboard facing to the left (right side lifted)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

So yeah, it looks like your laptop has a rotation sensor which is sending the informations GNOME is using. Unsure there is technically a bug in that behaviour...

[wastrel (wastrel)]

I find this behavior unexpected, confusing, and user-hostile. But if there's no way to do anything about it at least it's documented here. Thanks for the pointer to iio-sensor-proxy, I've removed that package:

$ sudo apt remove --purge iio-sensor-proxy

You can close this bug if there's nothing further to do.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Right, it seems wrong, but is that an hardware issue/the rotation sensor providing bug informations?

[wastrel (wastrel)]

I believe the accelerometer in this model is intended for "HP 3D Driveguard" to park HDD drive heads to help protect the drive from fall damage. So the sensor was probably not intended to reflect the orientation of the screen.

I looked for a BIOS or firmware update on HPs site but didn't find any that mention the accelerometer or orientation issues.

Some searches turn up people using Windows 10 finding the same upside-down orientation problems on this hardware.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Scott Cantrell (j-scott-cantrell)]

Everything I have read points to the "3D Driveguard". I appreciate the feature and would not so much mind the screen auto-reorientation both
 a) the screen orientation would auto reset even when the screen is locked
 b) screen auto-reorientation could be controlled or disabled in the system display settings (not just for the user)

[Stian Skjelstad (mywave)]

This affects HP/Compaq 8510p too. This model too was sold with "3D DriveGuard", and the screen orientation is:

flat: nothing changes, keeps whatever is already in use

lift the laptop tilt slightly up (screen-mount is higher than mouse-pad: up-side down !! This is very annoying

Keyboard all the way up, like a painting, normal orientation: up side down !!

Keyboard all the way up, like a painting, upside down: screen turns the normal way. This is how you recover the screen orientation

Put laptop on the sides, screens turns as expected

[Stian Skjelstad (mywave)]

Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS, x86 (newest version available for this arch)

iio-sensor-proxy: 2.4-2