black screen on boot

bulletsforbreakfast · 2016-01-18 20:40:24

Hey everyone,

i've been using arch happily for quite some time, but i have trouble installing it on a brand new laptop. it's a lenovo Y700 15.6 inch,which has a skylake CPU (forgot which one exactly) and nvidia's optimus technology.
In order to boot properly, i added the i915.enable_preliminary_hw_support kernel boot parameter, and everything went fine untill i tried to install PRIME for optimus, using the instructions at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME
Previously, the external card was disabled in the BIOS to allow arch to boot, but now it doesn't matter: i get a black screen every time i try to boot.

blindly logging in has no effect, switching to another terminal does nothing either. the screen's backlight does light up, but nothing happens.

the recovery shell does work, sort of. connecting to the internet simply causes the shell to restart. i managed to find the following error messages in the log:

- ignoring bgrt: invalid status 0 (expected 1)
- platform MSFT0101:00: failed to claim resource 1
- acpi MSFT0101:00: platform device creation failed
- mmc0: unknown controller version (3) you may experience problems
- failed to mount /boot (and a message a bit earlier staying "unknown filesystem vfat. I only see this message during boot when the rescue kernel command is on)
- no caching mode page found (assuming drive cache: write through)

There's still an usb stick with arch's live image on it. arch-chrooting there doesn't seem to help either: the log is still binary, and all pacman operations fail with a file not found for the mirrorlist (doing ls /etc/pacman.d/ results in "invalid argument")

loqs · 2016-01-18 22:01:51

bulletsforbreakfast wrote:

Hey everyone,
i've been using arch happily for quite some time, but i have trouble installing it on a brand new laptop. it's a lenovo Y700 15.6 inch,which has a skylake CPU (forgot which one exactly) and nvidia's optimus technology.
In order to boot properly, i added the i915.enable_preliminary_hw_support kernel boot parameter, and everything went fine untill i tried to install PRIME for optimus, using the instructions at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME
Previously, the external card was disabled in the BIOS to allow arch to boot, but now it doesn't matter: i get a black screen every time i try to boot.

Which steps precisely from the prime wiki page did you follow?

bulletsforbreakfast wrote:

blindly logging in has no effect, switching to another terminal does nothing either. the screen's backlight does light up, but nothing happens.
the recovery shell does work, sort of. connecting to the internet simply causes the shell to restart. i managed to find the following error messages in the log:
- ignoring bgrt: invalid status 0 (expected 1)
- platform MSFT0101:00: failed to claim resource 1
- acpi MSFT0101:00: platform device creation failed
- mmc0: unknown controller version (3) you may experience problems
- failed to mount /boot (and a message a bit earlier staying "unknown filesystem vfat. I only see this message during boot when the rescue kernel command is on)
- no caching mode page found (assuming drive cache: write through)
There's still an usb stick with arch's live image on it. arch-chrooting there doesn't seem to help either: the log is still binary, and all pacman operations fail with a file not found for the mirrorlist (doing ls /etc/pacman.d/ results in "invalid argument")

The binary log do you mean Journal?
/var/log/pacman.log should be plain text and would be useful to know if the there was a kernel upgrade before the last successful reboot.
ach-chrooting into the live image? You would normally boot using the love media then use arch-chroot to access the installed system.
Would suggest booting from the live media using arch-chroot and post the entry from the journal for a failed boot attempt.

Elizine · 2016-01-19 08:50:40

It might be that Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) is bothering your graphics card and so, it isn't working properly, so you can disable it by appending

radeon.modeset=0

to the grub line.

If that fails, try a simple

nomodeset

For more information about running an ATI card under Arch, see the ATI page on the Arch wiki - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-01-19 12:43:51

Elizine wrote:

It might be that Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) is bothering your graphics card and so, it isn't working properly, so you can disable it by appending
radeon.modeset=0
to the grub line.

The OP has an NVIDIA Optimus system

@OP -- try these kernel parameters:

nomodeset i915.modeset=0 nouveau.modeset=0

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KM … odesetting

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-01-19 12:44:59)

bulletsforbreakfast · 2016-01-19 20:30:29

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

@OP -- try these kernel parameters:
nomodeset i915.modeset=0 nouveau.modeset=0
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KM … odesetting

Awesome! that did the trick and to think it's so simple...
oh, and just to clarify: i made a mistake in my OP: i arch-chrooted from the live image to the actual system and not the other way around. that wouldn't make sense

Arch Linux

#1 2016-01-18 20:40:24

black screen on boot

#2 2016-01-18 22:01:51

Re: black screen on boot

#3 2016-01-19 08:50:40

Re: black screen on boot

#4 2016-01-19 12:43:51

Re: black screen on boot

#5 2016-01-19 20:30:29

Re: black screen on boot

Board footer