Arch Linux

ArleCamille

Member

Registered: 2021-01-28

Posts: 10

[SOLVED] Arch does not display anything on my Cezanne laptop

My laptop is a 2021 revision of ASUS TUF Gaming A15, the full model name goes by FA506QR-AZ001. It has a weird combination of AMD internal graphics (I don't know the model; this is what resides inside RYZEN 5800E) and NVIDIA external graphics (RTX 3070).

After installing Arch, it hangs when it runs the systemd unit

graphical.target

even when I installed nothing relevant to the graphical environment.

nomodeset

allows me to boot, but it is a no-go for a long run since I want to ultimately use Plasma on this system.

Since the boot hangs, I cannot post something like

dmesg

or

journalctl -xe

by text; instead here is the picture of what happened during the boot process. (The log was obtained by setting loglevel=7 and removing the quiet flag.)

I tried installing

xf86-video-amdgpu nvidia mesa nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils lib32-mesa

and blacklisting

nouveau

, with no avail.

I was using the mainline kernel(linux) when the question was written.

Last edited by ArleCamille (2021-01-28 08:30:58)

ArleCamille

Member

Registered: 2021-01-28

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Arch does not display anything on my Cezanne laptop

Some updates regarding the situation:

Pressing the power button for soft shutdown works even when the screen is stuck. It seems the system itself is working, but the display driver hangs or cannot properly show artifacts.

linux-lts does show the console, but does not show SDDM and is stuck at the virtual console. Also, glxgears don't work at all.

linux-rc (AUR) exhibits the exact same behavior as the original post.

Adding kernel option pci=noats does not change the result for each kernel.

Firmwares for vega20 exist in the file system. (This is supposed to communicate with the Cezanne APU, right?)

I want to test with linux-mainline, but compiling another kernel takes a very long time. Therefore, linux-mainline would be tested later.

Last edited by ArleCamille (2021-01-28 05:21:17)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 7,732

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Arch does not display anything on my Cezanne laptop

Perhaps try enabling an early KMS start for the iGPU: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke … _KMS_start

If that doesn't work then boot once without nomodeset then boot again with nomodeset and check the journal from the failed boot to see if the amdgpu firmware is actually loaded.

---

Are you infected with Wetiko?

ArleCamille

Member

Registered: 2021-01-28

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Arch does not display anything on my Cezanne laptop

Perhaps try enabling an early KMS start for the iGPU: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke … _KMS_start

Didn't work. It even made the situation worse, by freezing early.

If that doesn't work then boot once without nomodeset then boot again with nomodeset and check the journal from the failed boot to see if the amdgpu firmware is actually loaded.

Well, the log for the frozen boot showed something like:

amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: Direct firmware load for amdgpu/green_sardine_sdma.bin failed with error -2
[drm:sdma_v4_0_early_init [amdgpu]] *ERROR* sdma_v4_0: Failed to load firmware "amdgpu/green_sardine_sdma.bin"
[drm:sdma_v4_0_early_init [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Failed to load sdma firmware!

...and there is no such file named green_sardine_sdma.bin under /lib/firmware/amdgpu.

I think I will return when I find firmwares for Green Sardine; the problem seems to be the lack of firmwares.

EDIT: This edit was deleted because it deserved a new post.

Last edited by ArleCamille (2021-01-28 08:21:06)

ArleCamille

Member

Registered: 2021-01-28

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Arch does not display anything on my Cezanne laptop

I think I will return when I find firmwares for Green Sardine; the problem seems to be the lack of firmwares.

Googling for green_sardine_sdma.bin showed literally no file (only 7 texts were found), and it seems the firmware themselves actually did not hit the upstream. I instead found the firmware here somehow (don't remember how). The boot still freezed though; with the same error. At first I didn't know why it happens even with the firmware in place, but I then realized that I turned on early KMS to solve the problem, and naturally the driver would be finding the firmware from the initramfs.

Therefore I disabled the early KMS again to let the driver find the firmware from the rootfs. Then SDDM worked. I wonder whether Optimus works, but it is off-topic and I will leave a separate post if necessary.

Here is the solution in the nutshell for future Cezanne users: after installation, download the firmware from here to /lib/firmware before you reboot into the system. This way the kernel will not get stuck because of the failed firmware.

I hope the firmware hits the upstream soon.