Arch Linux

Bobsterar

Member

Registered: 2026-06-13

Posts: 4

Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

I've tried everything in https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Silent_boot and I can't get silent boot to work. I think I've thrown everything into cmdline.

Whenever I log in with ly, shut down, or sign out my computer, I see a little blinking cursor on a black screen and am reminded of my failures.

I would greatly appreciate the help, thank you.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 15,091

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

Is that little blinking cursor shown at left top of the screen ?
If so that comes from the firmware of your system, not linux .

Most of the time its visible when the screen output is active but the screen hasn't received any input yet.
Switching screen modes can also cause this .

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

Bobsterar

Member

Registered: 2026-06-13

Posts: 4

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

Yeah, the little blinky thing at the left top.

Shoot, that comes from firmware? Is there anything I can do about that, or must I live to love it?

dimich

Member

From: Kharkiv, Ukraine

Registered: 2009-11-03

Posts: 644

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

Since blinking cursor is present during shutdown, it looks like either "vt.global_cursor_default=0" is not applied or cursor visibility is restored later.
Let's check your kernel command line first:

$ xargs -n1 -a /proc/cmdline

Also I suggest to remove "quiet" for testing and check if cursor is present while kernel prints its boot messages.

Bobsterar

Member

Registered: 2026-06-13

Posts: 4

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

zswap.enabled=0
rootflags=subvol=@
rw
rootfstype=btrfs
loglevel=1
systemd.show_status=no
rd.systemd.show_status=false
quiet
global_cursor_default=0
vt.global_cursor_default=0
bgrt_disable

vt.global_cursor_default=0 is applied.

I ran it without quiet, and the system boot messages and the cursor are from different screens, because they have different looking fonts.

It's boot messages without any cursors into empty black screen with cursor.

dimich

Member

From: Kharkiv, Ukraine

Registered: 2009-11-03

Posts: 644

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

I ran it without quiet, and the system boot messages and the cursor are from different screens, because they have different looking fonts.

Then indeed, it looks like the cursor is drawn by EFI firmware.
What is your hardware (motherboard, GPU) and UEFI version ("Firmware:" line in bootctl output)?
With "vt.global_cursor_default=0" I see no any cursor on Dell laptop with Intel GPU. Later will check whether it works for Nvidia on another PC.

Last edited by dimich (2026-06-14 12:02:38)

Bobsterar

Member

Registered: 2026-06-13

Posts: 4

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

I ran it without quiet, and the system boot messages and the cursor are from different screens, because they have different looking fonts.

Then indeed, it looks like the cursor is drawn by EFI firmware.
What is your hardware (motherboard, GPU) and UEFI firmware ("Firmware:" line in bootctl output)?
With "vt.global_cursor_default=0" I see no any cursor on Dell laptop with Intel GPU. Later will check whether it works for Nvidia on another PC.

My motherboard's a ASRock B550-ITX/ac and my GPU is an AMD.

dimich

Member

From: Kharkiv, Ukraine

Registered: 2009-11-03

Posts: 644

Re: Can't seem to get a perfect silent boot.

On nvidia frambuffer "vt.global_cursor_default=0" hides cursor as well.
Maybe it's a quirk of specific AMD EFI framebuffer implementation. Unfortunatelly I don't have any PC with AMD GPU nearby to check.