Arch Linux

gnunn

Member

Registered: 2013-10-21

Posts: 102

[Solved] Plymouth not appearing on external displays with USB4 dock

I have a Lenovo Z16 (6950H and 6650M GPU) which I am using with a HP G4 TB4 docking station. Everything works fine except that during the boot process plymouth does not appear on my external displays, once it gets to GDM then the displays light up as expected.

This issue makes typing in my encrypt password difficult since my laptop sits on a lower shelf away from my desk, so while it's not an end of the world problem it is irritating.

I have the amdgpu set in mkinitcpio.conf as per below:

MODULES=(amdgpu btrfs)
BINARIES=(/usr/bin/btrfs)
FILES=()
HOOKS=(base udev keyboard plymouth autodetect keymap modconf block encrypt filesystems fsck)

I thought maybe there is an issue with the dock not being authorized so I have tried adding udev rules to always enable devices (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Thunde … any_device) but no joy and I'm not sure these rules are even processed when plymouth starts versus the full boot.

I have another laptop, a Lenovo Slim 7 with an Intel i7-1260p with Arch Linux, and when I plug it into the dock and boot plymouth lights up the external displays as expected. Neither laptop has any Thunderbolt settings in the BIOS as far as I can tell.

Any suggestions for things to check or try?

Last edited by gnunn (2023-10-18 22:10:17)

gnunn

Member

Registered: 2013-10-21

Posts: 102

Re: [Solved] Plymouth not appearing on external displays with USB4 dock

Solved, adding thunderbolt to the list of modules gets the screens working. Interesting that I needed it on AMD versus just working on the Intel laptop.

dasunsrule32

Member

Registered: 2025-06-25

Posts: 1

Re: [Solved] Plymouth not appearing on external displays with USB4 dock

Solved, adding thunderbolt to the list of modules gets the screens working. Interesting that I needed it on AMD versus just working on the Intel laptop.

This actually worked for me on a newer AMD based laptop as well. Thank you for posting solution.

MODULES=(crc32c thunderbolt)

System info:

Operating System: CachyOS Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.1
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.15.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Kernel Version: 6.15.3-3-cachyos (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 w/ Radeon 860M
Memory: 64 GiB of RAM (62.0 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon 860M Graphics
Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
Product Name: Dell Pro 14 Plus PB14255

Last edited by dasunsrule32 (2025-07-02 18:05:17)