Arch Linux

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

[SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

I have this on a fresh iso (2024-10-01) made with Rufus (in DD mode) when booting on the USB key
Edit : after testing, it happens on all ISO from 2024.02.01, 2024.01.01 being the last one that boots without setting the kernel parameter

I checked :
- windows 11 boots and works perfectly
- Arch linux booted properly until I messed up GDM
- fastboot is disabled, so is Fast startup
- Bios is in UEFI mode
- no change in USB / hard drive config
- I tried to unplug my hubs, also the monitor USB hub, same result
- tried a different USB key, same result

----------------------
Solution : set `nomodeset` as a kernel parameter : https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … issues/233

Last edited by Jubijub (2024-10-19 12:18:59)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,090

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

- windows 11 boots and works perfectly

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_b … ibernation

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

- windows 11 boots and works perfectly

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_b … ibernation

How is this relevant to the problem ? Fastboot has always been disabled for both OS, I've been dualbooting on this PC with win10 (then win11) and Arch for years with no issues. Also I did not reinstall windows

But I have news : I tried a NixOS key, it shows the same error BUT it manages to boot afterwards, after a message saying that it is waiting for the boot device a bit longer
I tried to add `rootwait=20` to the kernel parameter of the Arch iso installer, but it changed nothing

Last edited by Jubijub (2024-10-11 21:34:53)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,090

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

- windows 11 boots and works perfectly

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_b … ibernation

How is this relevant to the problem ?

because windows being windows

anyway - your initial post doesn't contain any question or issue or error - all you got us is some one-liner in the title - https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_b … ibernation

How is this relevant to the problem ?

because windows being windows

anyway - your initial post doesn't contain any question or issue or error - all you got us is some one-liner in the title - https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855

“Windows being windows” : this is lame, sorry. If you don’t have any ideas that’s ok, you don’t have to post. I use the right tool for the job, and sometimes windows is even the only possible tool.
If you do read the post you see that I’ve been running a dual boot for years AND that I’ve checked the common issues, so it’s likely not the problem

“No question” : there is a question : how do I go past this error message that is preventing the arch iso from booting.

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,090

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

well - have a look for yourself how often dual booting with windows is the issue
about referencing to that specific troubleshooting is something others also do as soon as they read "windows" - and honestly: no, I not read any further past that line

anyway ... we still don't have any further info about the issue - I doubt that the one-liner you used as this topics title is the entire message
also: there're a couple of options you can try to increase the verbosity of the boot log so maybe additional lines which can give further hints show up

also:
- have you tried other boot options like PXE or optical media?
- have you tried an earlier version?
- have you tried other boot images like, idk, a live knoppix, a windows install or sonething like one of those "ultimate boot cds"?
- have you tried to boot the installed OS in runlevel 3 without graphical desktop?

so, if you don't mind: there's still plenty of options to try and some informations missing - from what you gave us so far it could also your thumbdrive at fault
I don't blame using rufus on windows to prepare a boot media - but for uefi it's sufficient to format the thumbdrive with a fat32 partition and put an efi bootloader in the path .\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI - you don't have to "burn" the inage to the thumbdrive - just extract it should work fine with uefi

speaking of uefi: could also be a bios issue - have you checked for updates? have you tried to reset it and try again?

I have plenty of ideas left for "thumbdrive doesn't properly boot" - in fact: from several decades of experience there were only two systems I was unable to get to work: one with a faulted bios rom chip and tge other one got shorted by miswired usb header - so if want to beef about "hey, read up: I use dual boot for years" - fine, but it isn't me failing to boot - the only unfortunate thing is that due to lack of physical access I can't offer you my rather broad suite of troubleshooting - not that I'm not willing to offer help

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

well - have a look for yourself how often dual booting with windows is the issue
about referencing to that specific troubleshooting is something others also do as soon as they read "windows" - and honestly: no, I not read any further past that line

Do you see how that is a problem ? You missed the answers to half your questions below.
I have been using Linux for 20 years, all of it as dual boot with Windows, including 4+ years using Arch as the linux distro. This is the first time I am having this, considering I did no hardware changes, and considering that an installed Arch DOES boot past this point

anyway ... we still don't have any further info about the issue - I doubt that the one-liner you used as this topics title is the entire message

So since you don't believe me, I made a video of the problem : https://photos.app.goo.gl/xtZE3Ewqw5umJYu69
As you can see, the last line IS this error message, then the computer reboots itself. (discard the first message with I2C, I've always had this on this motherboard it is not preventing the boot)
it's happening very early in the boot process as you can see, and so nothing else happens : it just fails and reboot.

also: there're a couple of options you can try to increase the verbosity of the boot log so maybe additional lines which can give further hints show up

also:
- have you tried other boot options like PXE or optical media?

Yes, and it's written in my my first post, this is literally the last line "tried a different USB key, same result"

re:boot verbosity : which option do you suggest that I use ?

- have you tried an earlier version?

No, I should this is a good point
EDIT : tried the 2024.08, same issue. Will try an older one

- have you tried other boot images like, idk, a live knoppix, a windows install or sonething like one of those "ultimate boot cds"?

Yes, I tried a Nix boot image (this is on my second post) : Nix shows the exact same error message BUT it does go past it and it boots. This gave me the idea that maybe the system tries to mount the iso while not finding the USB key and should wait longer (Nix seems to retry, it writes a message about that). So I tried the kernel option `rootwait=20` and it didn't work (this is also in my second post)

- have you tried to boot the installed OS in runlevel 3 without graphical desktop?

I tried but the system seems hanged, I can't bring the tty
EDIT : I retried, same issue (the cursor is stuck on the top left, nothing moves, impossible to bring the TTY with any CTRL+ALT+Fx combination I tried

so, if you don't mind: there's still plenty of options to try and some informations missing - from what you gave us so far it could also your thumbdrive at fault

Again, if you didn't spend all your time being so complacent and actually read past the "windows" line, you would have seen that I actually tried all these things except one, and I did report about that. I've been using Arch for years, I know about the trivial issues. This one I have never encountered before, and I googled about it a lot. It seems USB related, so I tried unpluging stuff to lighten the bus, didn't work either.

I don't blame using rufus on windows to prepare a boot media - but for uefi it's sufficient to format the thumbdrive with a fat32 partition and put an efi bootloader in the path .\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI - you don't have to "burn" the inage to the thumbdrive - just extract it should work fine with uefi

I tried both, same result (and the idea to burn with dd mode is litterally a recommendation from the arch wiki when using Rufus : https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_fl … sing_Rufus )

speaking of uefi: could also be a bios issue - have you checked for updates? have you tried to reset it and try again?

no, and I will. I was dreading having to do that because it's a pain to reconfigure, but I guess I have no other ideas of things to try.
EDIT : done, and no difference

I have plenty of ideas left for "thumbdrive doesn't properly boot" - in fact: from several decades of experience there were only two systems I was unable to get to work: one with a faulted bios rom chip and tge other one got shorted by miswired usb header - so if want to beef about "hey, read up: I use dual boot for years" - fine, but it isn't me failing to boot - the only unfortunate thing is that due to lack of physical access I can't offer you my rather broad suite of troubleshooting - not that I'm not willing to offer help

I thank you for trying to help, but I don't think it helps to just discard everything on 'oh no, windows is present on this workstation"

Last edited by Jubijub (2024-10-12 14:40:14)

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

So finally trying the 2024.01 iso worked, and I could fix my installed arch (putting it back to sddm)

I don' t know what is the problem

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,090

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

with "different media" I meant "different media type" as in "not usb"

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

with "different media" I meant "different media type" as in "not usb"

It’s been probably 10 years since I’ve had an optical drive in my PC, I also don’t have any external drive (those would be USB anyway)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,090

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

Well, but you seem to somehow run windows - so there seems at least a 2nd drive in the system?
With at least another device in the same network you can give PXE a try. The download page even have a section for it: https://archlinux.org/releng/netboot/
Yet another option is to use BCDEDIT from a WinPE and add an entry to chain grub from the windows bootloader - an example shown here: https://de.opensuse.org/Dual-Installati … wingend.29
There's also a tool from opensuse which installs a grub into the ESP and sets it for the next boot - but I struggle to find it on the repos and google isn't helpful finding it, either. There's also "Grub2Win" which I guess is the base or at least does the same.
So, there're several options to boot something else even with just 1 drive in the system.

But as an older install image works there seem changes that hint at maybe hardware related issues (to get back around with my complaint about missing information): So a brief info about motherboard (and its current bios version) and the cpu could be helpful to determine if current install images are just incompatible with your hardware (or in other terms: if your hardware is too old - and please, don'T argue about it - just post your board and cpu - although anything able to run win11 should also have no issues with current arch install images).

live4thamuzik

Member

Registered: 2024-02-27

Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

Sounds like you missed a step when switching from Lemurs to GDM. Not sure why you would use GDM with hyprland, it has known issue with crashing Hyprland on 1st launch. The wiki recommends SDDM or Greetd.  (https://wiki.hyprland.org/Getting-Start … -Tutorial/)

If you are able to boot into the ArchISO, mount all of your partitions for your Arch installation then chroot in. You should be able to check systemctl to seem which greeter is enabled or not. Also check all conf files related to greeters to ensure proper config.

I am a bit unclear as to what the actual issue is because OP indicates the greeter is broken. Your responses to other posts could indicate your bootloader is also messed up. If so what bootloader are you using for Arch?

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

The main issue is the usb stick not booting with the error message

(I needed the stick to be able to chroot and fix my hyprland issue with GDM. As I could boot an older key, this is now fixed, I put sddm, all good.)

I will report a bug in arch for the usb iso booting, as 2024.01 version boots, and 2024.08 and 2024.10 don’t. Nixos (from May/June) shows the same issue but instead of hanging NixOs resumes the boot somehow.

So to;dr :
- I found a version of arch that accepts to boot, but still don’t know why the latest version doesn’t
- I could fix my issue, so my installed arch is back to normal

live4thamuzik

Member

Registered: 2024-02-27

Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

have you tested a usb boot disk for windows? I saw you tried Rufus in DD mode.. maybe try creating your arch usb stick with https://etcher.balena.io/

maybe its the flash drive itself...

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

have you tested a usb boot disk for windows? I saw you tried Rufus in DD mode.. maybe try creating your arch usb stick with https://etcher.balena.io/

maybe its the flash drive itself...

I did try the same USB stick on the same port with a NixOS iso, and it works (it shows the same error message, but it boots past it)
Also the same stick with an iso from 2024.01 boots with no error
I also tried a different USB stick with the same result

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,090

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

still:

hint at maybe hardware related issues: So a brief info about motherboard (and its current bios version) and the cpu could be helpful

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

ASUS x670e Extreme, latest bios (2403 from end of sept 2024). It was the same with July 2024 bios

CPU is 7950X

Jubijub

Member

From: Zurich, Switzerland

Registered: 2018-04-04

Posts: 34

Re: [SOLVED] Arch ISO: Monitor goes blank / dark during boot

Fixed : it was not a USB issue, in fact the PC didn't reboot, the monitor just went blank.

It's fixed by setting `nomodeset` as a kernel parameter

https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/ … issues/233