IIO-Sensor Proxy is Very Buggy

k4ever07 · February 15, 2025, 11:16pm

TL:DR: IIO-Sensor Proxy seems to only be flaking out on Surface Pro devices running EndeavourOS.

I’m using EndeavourOS on a Surface Pro 8. I have two installs, each on it’s own separate NVME SSD. One has EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma as the desktop and the other has EndeavourOS with GNOME as the desktop. All of the applications and libraries are up to date as of my writing this. I am using the latest Arch Surface Linux kernel, 6.12.7-arch1-1-surface, on both builds.

Every now and then (randomly) when I wake my device from sleep while the screen is in landscape mode, iio-sensor proxy will freak-out, rotate the screen to portrait mode, and then lock the device in that position. The screen will not rotate again on its own out of portrait mode until I reboot the device. Iio-sensor proxy also delays the device from shutting down.

I can force the screen to rotate to landscape mode by running “kscreen-doctor output.1.rotation.normal” while in KDE Plasma. However, it will return portrait mode upon another wake from sleep. Auto rotation also stays broken until a reboot.

GNOME just completely breaks. Most of the time it will rotate to portrait and stay there, with the screen and applications becoming unresponsive. Sometimes it will stay in landscape mode with auto rotation being broken, but the screen will lock up on random applications (like Strawberry Media Player). GNOME does allow me to reboot with the power button, but not from using the touchsceen, mouse, or keyboard.

I don’t know if this is a Surface Linux on Arch problem, an EndeavourOS iio-sensor proxy problem, or an Arch iio-sensor proxy problem. EndeavourOS is the only Arch based distribution that I use as a daily (EndeavourOS KDE), I use to occasionally test GNOME, and seems to be the only distribution where I’m having this problem. I also have a third NVME SSD for my Surface Pro 8 that I use to test Nobara 41 Official (KDE Plasma). It’s using the latest Fedora Surface Linux kernel, kernel-surface-6.12.7-1.surface.fc41, and doesn’t seem to have this issue (yet).

Someone else is having the same issue with EndeavousOS on a Surface Pro 6:

github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface

Screen does not auto-rotate after waking from sleep, SP6

opened 05:18AM - 10 Feb 25 UTC

WarpedVoxel

I have a Surface Pro 6 running EndeavourOS with KDE and Wayland. The screen rota…tes automatically perfectly fine, until the device wakes from sleep. At that point it just doesn't autorotate at all. However, rotating the device to "portrait" does activate tablet mode, both before and after sleeping. After a reboot, autorotation works again. Before sleeping, `gdbus introspect --system --dest net.hadess.SensorProxy --object-path /net/hadess/SensorProxy` returns that `AccelerometerOrientation = 'normal';` when the device is in a "landscape" orientation (with the type cover attached at the bottom) and that `AccelerometerOrientation = 'left-up';` in "portrait" orientation (with the type cover attached on the user's left). After sleeping, the orientation is reported `normal` no matter the device's orientation. I also did find that command on the iio-sensor-proxy gitlab page, so I'm not entirely sure what all it's supposed to do, and if anyone knows of a command or file that will give more useful info, I'd be glad to run it.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! Also, I would be eager to know if this is happening on other, non-Surface devices…

xircon · February 15, 2025, 11:22pm

Are you running the surface kernel?

k4ever07 · February 16, 2025, 1:12am

Yes, it’s mentioned in my post. I’m running 6.12.7-arch1-1-surface.

k4ever07 · February 16, 2025, 10:35pm

Apparently, this is an Arch problem. There is something broken with the latest version of iio-sensor-proxy for Arch, version 3.6.1. There is an issue ticket filed:

The “fix” is to downgrade to version 3.5.2.

system · February 18, 2025, 10:35pm

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