Arch Linux

breakingmatter

Member

Registered: 2018-06-05

Posts: 1

Garbled console text on Macbook Pro 11,3

I've been running Arch Linux on my MBP 11,3 for about two years now. For the longest time, everything was swell. There were issues here and there, but most of those have been corrected by now. But, one issue has come up in the middle of that.

Roughly around the same time that the new proprietary nVidia driver started supporting KMS, I started having a new issue with my display. When running in console mode, the first few seconds everything looks fine. After Grub2 hands off to linux, the first few lines of text come up just fine. Then, (I'm assuming when KMS kicks in), the entire screen goes blank for a split second, and then comes back, but only partially. The top ~1in of the display is all that shows text, and it's incredibly garbled. Lines writing on top of each other, the text itself looks incredibly pixelated (to the point where you can't read it at all). But, after X11 starts, the display refreshes and it's all good. The problem is that when something fails during boot, I can't tell because the text is garbled and only the top inch shows up. Plus, it's just a hassle. I either have to wait for the console login comes up and login (again, screen is still garbled) and wait for X to start (or run startx) and then it works. For now, I've just been using a display manager (SLiM) to start X for me.

I've hunted up and down the forums, Google, the Arch wiki, etc. To date, I've tried the following:

- correctly configured all the KMS stuff for nVidia per the wiki (added the modules to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, added nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to the cmdline in grub config, etc)
- tried nouveau, but no go (some bug causes my laptop to hang at random points several times a day)
- tried various combinations of grub text mode, console mode, gfxmode, gfxpayload_linux, etc
- tried using plymouth to just have "something" display during boot rather than garbled text
- added the setpci commands described here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/878548/ … -bl/943077
- prayed to the new gods and the old

Nothing seems to work. I even tried disabling KMS altogether, but then I just get a black screen.

What I'm hoping to get is Arch Linux, with the proprietary nVidia drivers, full KMS support, and a normal text/console boot with a fully working display. Hopefully this is actually possible.

Thanks in advance for any help. Willing to try anything at this point.