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#1 2021-06-09 17:03:57

DarioP
Member
From: Geneva
Registered: 2011-01-05
Posts: 165

Screen sometimes goes black right after systemd-boot

I have a weird situation on a Skylake laptop that I manage. It runs Arch as the only OS. It has a single nvme drive, with /boot, /, /home and swap on different partitions.

After powering it on, I get the bios splash, then systemd-boot gets loaded all fine. However after selecting a boot entry, the screen goes black indefinitely without any further message. I have to power it off the hard way and retry.

This issue is not consistent: sometimes it will boot fine at the first attempt, sometimes I will have to retry 5, 6 or even more times. Also it has been present through several kernel updates, affecting both linux and linux-lts.

When the boot fails dmesg is left untouched: when looking back in the logs it skips to the previous successful boot, which looks totally fine.

Things that I tried and that had no long term effect:
* messing around with the intel graphics modules (no hybrid graphics) in the initramfs, early KMS, framebuffer settings
* updating the bios
* replacing the ssd (with a fresh system install)

I have never observed the issue booting the live (although I have limited experience with this).

Any module or kernel option that I could try? Or should I just try a different boot loader? I feel like I am shooting in the dark...

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#2 2021-06-09 20:48:25

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,963

Re: Screen sometimes goes black right after systemd-boot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … bug_output
Do you also get this when booting "nomodeset"?

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#3 2021-06-09 21:06:14

DarioP
Member
From: Geneva
Registered: 2011-01-05
Posts: 165

Re: Screen sometimes goes black right after systemd-boot

Thank you, I did miss that wiki, I hope I can get more log.

I did not try nomodeset before as https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Intel_graphics#Loading explicitly discourages it, but I can ignore the wiki.

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#4 2021-06-09 21:11:52

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,963

Re: Screen sometimes goes black right after systemd-boot

nomodeset will prevent a (reasonable) display server (you can run X11 on the vesa driver. you can also ram a fork into your eye. doesn't make either a good idea) - so it's a bad idea for everyday use.
However, the goal here is to isolate the cause of the error and avoiding the framebuffer console to see whether you consistently get a text console is a good approach to "black screen" issues.

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