Arch Linux

orlfman

Member

Registered: 2007-11-20

Posts: 141

odd issue of receiving a black screen when EXITING x server.

I successfully installed arch on my late 2013 27in imac in single boot configuration (so only arch) along with a pure efi boot (systemd boot + native boot manager). it has a nvidia 755m. everything is working great except one tad issue... when I kill my x server, it just takes me to a solid, black screen. what's weird is that it is taking me to the console. i can blindly type "systemctl reboot / power off" and it will accordingly. i tried issuing a reset / clear command, and i'm sure something is happening, but sadly doesn't remove the black screen. i also believe i can switch tty's as well because if i switch to another, i can blindly type username, password, and issue a reboot command.

i think this is an issue with nvidia's drivers because i did notice another quirk. before i started x for the very first time i had typed nvidia-smi and it printed back nothing but blank output. i was able to see the console and all, but the results from nvidia-smi where blank... until i started to type more and get more text on the screen, such as doing ls -lha and pacman -Syyu, all of a sudden as the screen pushed downward, the actual print of nvidia-smi came fruition. prior to installing the nvidia drivers, i can't recall having such issues at all with any output showing. so i'm assuming this has some correlation with the black screen i'm receiving after exiting x server.

also its been awhile since I used a nvidia card. on my main machine i had switched over to a rx 580. last time i used nvidia i remember the console not being my native resolution but now it seems like nvidia has some sort of KMS support. so i'm also wondering if that could be causing it?

any help appreciated.

edit:
also want to add when I'm in an x session, and change to another tty, that tty is black, but i can switch back to the x tty just fine.

edit #2:
so i tried setting nomodeset and that made no difference. actually my screen resolution in console didn't even change. after googling some more i found out why, its the efi setting the resolution. i also tried activating nvidia's kms by adding the corresponding modules to mkinitcpio.conf and the kernel parameter. both not only did not help, but made things worse. the console upon bootup was corrupted. i was able to log in, and going back into an x session was perfectly fine though. so now i'm left to thinking its the efi that for whatever reason, when i boot into an x session, i can't switch back to a console tty. when i boot directly to the console tty everything is fine. i can switch and everything works great. but once x is started all of that gets thrown out the window.

i feel as if i would have to install arch in bios compatibility mode instead of using efi. but that be a shame.

Last edited by orlfman (2017-07-28 19:08:59)

zulqurnain

Member

Registered: 2016-11-15

Posts: 18

Re: odd issue of receiving a black screen when EXITING x server.

try nouveau. its kicking ass lately

Last edited by zulqurnain (2017-09-14 21:19:56)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,668

Re: odd issue of receiving a black screen when EXITING x server.

Load the nvidia-drm module with modeset=1 to be able to switch back and forth again, won't help with console resolution though

e.g. /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf

nvidia-drm modeset=1

MaddyBoo

Member

From: Portland, OR

Registered: 2017-05-02

Posts: 10

Website

Re: odd issue of receiving a black screen when EXITING x server.

Do you have any update on this?

I've been experiencing the same exact issue as the OP ever since I switched from Nouveau to the proprietary Nvidia drivers several months ago. I've read a lot of threads with similar issues, but not quite exactly the same.

I have a very similar setup to OP (Macbook Pro 15", mid 2014, GeForce GT 750M, rEFInd boot manager) and experience the same issues:

Upon booting, all of my TTY logins/consoles work perfectly. After launching X, attempting to switch to another TTY or quitting X results in a fully black screen. I can blindly type my login info and startx and X will work again.

I've tried various solutions I've found in other similar threads:

- installing uvesafb: takes effect in my TTYs after boot but still get a black screen upon switching/killing X11
- setting `nvidia-drm.modeset=1` kernel paramter (followed all prerequisite steps listed on the wiki): results in a black screen soon after initramfs starts. If I blindly wait for my system to finish booting and blindly type in my login info, I can get X11 to start correctly but again same issues of black screen upon switching TTY or quitting X11.
- several other tweaks to configurations that I can't quite remember

Any tips would be appreciated.

By the way, I prefer to use the proprietary drivers over Nouveau because performance is significantly better - I have severe graphical lag with no load when using Nouveau.