Black screen after GRUB menu

[andrewsimpson]

Modifying /etc/grub.d/10_linux is problematic in that it is a file distributed with grub, and either an update will overwrite your change, or you'll not get a new version.

Agreed, that is the downside of fiddling.

For $vt_handoff problems, also known as gfxmode=keep problems, /boot/grub/gfxblacklist.txt suggests adding GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text to /etc/default/grub (and running sudo update-grub of course).

Hmmm... yes, but I think that will give a text boot, instead of a graphical boot?

Really though, I made this reply because I was so surprised to see another Kiwi, and another Jaffa to boot!

[jlittle]

Modifying /etc/grub.d/10_linux is problematic in that it is a file distributed with grub, and either an update will overwrite your change, or you'll not get a new version.

For $vt_handoff problems, also known as gfxmode=keep problems, /boot/grub/gfxblacklist.txt suggests adding
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text to /etc/default/grub (and running sudo update-grub of course). That will cause $vt_handoff to be blank. Just tried it, and the resulting grub.cfg does indeed make $vt_handoff blank, but I don't know what other effects it might have.

Another way is to remove "splash" from the setting of GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT; some of us here like seeing all the boot messages, but maybe you find it ugly, or off-putting for ordinary users.

[andrewsimpson]

So, from what I understand you get a Grub screen, then a blank screen (no Plymouth) during boot, then the normal KDM login screen. After that KDE as normal. Well, I've just had that and fixed it.

Googling around suggested that the kernel parameter 'vt_handoff' in the Grub command line could be problematic. At the Grub screen, I chose 'e' for temporary edit and the removed the variable $vt_handoff (Yes, it's a variable). Saved and booted from Grub. Voila! Nice normal graphical boot!

O.K., the problem is $vt_handoff. Turns out that this is a kernel parameter added by Ubuntu that is meant to ensure a smoother, more flicker free transition to Plymouth, but it can be a bit unreliable. The code in /boot/grub/grub.cfg sets the variable $vt_handoff to either 'vt_handoff=7' or '' (null), at boot depending on the boot state.

I wanted $vt_handoff = '' (null), because this worked for me, but grub.cfg states 'DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE'. After a while I found the rules in /etc/grub.d which create the grub.cfg file...

/etc/grub.d/*10linux

prefix="/usr"
exec_prefix="/usr"
datarootdir="/usr/share"
ubuntu_recovery="1"
quiet_boot="1"
quick_boot="1"
gfxpayload_dynamic="1"
vt_handoff="1"

...

if [ "$vt_handoff" = 1 ]; then
  for word in $GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT; do
    if [ "$word" = splash ]; then
      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="$GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT \$vt_handoff"
    fi
  done
fi

Changing this line...

vt_handoff="1"

to this...

vt_handoff="0"

gets rid of $vt_handoff. Now just need to reconfigure...

sudo update-grub
sudo update-initramfs -u

Worked for me.

[MoonBlossom]

No need. Thank you so much for your help!!!

[SteveRiley]

Rats. I'm out of ideas for now. Need to think for a bit. Sorry for taking so much time.

[MoonBlossom]

I noticed that going into recovery mode on the 3.16 kernel and selecting resume boot does work! but if I allowed the system to boot normal it doesn't

[MoonBlossom]

I added nox2apic and I enabled the Nvidia drivers. I still got a black screen

[SteveRiley]

Alright. I don't use GRUB, and I'm not familiar with how that KDE control module works. The objective is add the boot parameter nox2apic to the kernel. Is editing the kernel boot line something you can do with this utility? If so, please make the requested change. Then in the firmware re-enable the NVIDIA graphics. Now boot to the 3.16 (Utopic) kernel. Does it work?

On my ThinkPad T520 with NVIDIA graphics, nox2apic is required, otherwise it won't boot. This has been necessary for several releases now.

[MoonBlossom]

If you are tired tomorrow is fine Thank you so much for helping me out

[MoonBlossom]

I have kde-config-grub2 on my system settings. I can modify Grub options this way.

[SteveRiley]

Hold on... are you familiar with editing kernel modules in GRUB's configuration? I have an idea...

[SteveRiley]

You're missing the package linux-headers-3.13-0-37-generic...that's why DKMS is failing to build for that kernel. And at this point I'm not sure it's worth the not insignificant hassle of trying to get it.

My usual approach to take when we reach this stage -- where the included NVIDIA drivers won't work -- is to use an alternate set of drivers from a PPA. Let's resume this tomorrow, OK? I'd also like to work you through a couple clean-up steps... you have a fair number of old packages on your system, and also some left-over package configuration files.

[MoonBlossom]

ls -al /lib/modules

total 24
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root 4096 Oct 24 02:08 .
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 4096 Oct 26 22:46 ..
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4096 Oct 24 02:08 3.13.0-24-generic
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root 4096 Oct 24 02:08 3.13.0-37-generic
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root 4096 Oct 26 22:47 3.16.0-23-generic
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Jun  7 03:48 3.8.0-31-generic

ls -al /lib/modules/*/build

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 Oct 21 11:47 /lib/modules/3.16.0-23-generic/build -> /usr/src/linux-headers-3.16.0-23-generic

ls -al /usr/src

total 56
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Oct 26 22:46 .
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 Oct 23 14:54 ..
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Jun  7 00:18 linux-headers-3.13.0-24
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Jun  7 00:16 linux-headers-3.13.0-29
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Jul  9 14:23 linux-headers-3.13.0-30
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Aug 13 14:02 linux-headers-3.13.0-33
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Aug 17 15:36 linux-headers-3.13.0-34
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Aug 31 02:54 linux-headers-3.13.0-35
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Sep 23 07:29 linux-headers-3.13.0-36
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Oct  8 16:23 linux-headers-3.13.0-37
drwxr-xr-x 24 root root 4096 Oct 23 14:29 linux-headers-3.16.0-23
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 Oct 23 14:29 linux-headers-3.16.0-23-generic
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Oct 26 22:46 nvidia-331-updates-331.89
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Oct 26 22:46 nvidia-331-updates-uvm-331.89
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   32 Oct 10 12:11 vboxhost-4.3.18 -> ../share/virtualbox/src/vboxhost

[SteveRiley]

Your computer is booting with the Intel graphics only. I'd like to see if we can get NVIDIA at least working on 3.13. Let's go looking for those kernel sources. What's the output of

ls -al /lib/modules

ls -al /lib/modules/*/build

ls -al /usr/src

[MoonBlossom]

lsmod | egrep -i 'intel|i915|nvidia|nouveau'

intel_rapl             18773  0 
intel_powerclamp       14705  0 
kvm_intel             143109  0 
kvm                   451552  1 kvm_intel
ghash_clmulni_intel    13216  0 
aesni_intel            55624  2 
aes_x86_64             17131  1 aesni_intel
snd_hda_intel          56451  5 
lrw                    13286  1 aesni_intel
snd_hda_codec         192906  3 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_intel
glue_helper            13990  1 aesni_intel
ablk_helper            13597  1 aesni_intel
snd_pcm               102099  3 snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel
snd_page_alloc         18710  2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
cryptd                 20359  3 ghash_clmulni_intel,aesni_intel,ablk_helper
snd                    69322  21 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hwdep,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_hdmi,snd_pcm,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_device,snd_seq_midi
i915                  783805  5 
i2c_algo_bit           13413  1 i915
drm_kms_helper         55071  1 i915
drm                   303102  4 i915,drm_kms_helper
video                  19476  1 i915

egrep -i 'intel|i915|nvidia|nouveau' /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[    32.246] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 0
[    32.246] (==) Matched intel as autoconfigured driver 1
[    32.246] (II) LoadModule: "intel"
[    32.247] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel_drv.so
[    32.264] (II) Module intel: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[    32.265] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Integrated Graphics Chipsets:
        915G, E7221 (i915), 915GM, 945G, 945GM, 945GME, Pineview GM,
[    32.265] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) HD Graphics: 2000-6000
[    32.265] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Iris(TM) Graphics: 5100, 6100
[    32.265] (II) intel: Driver for Intel(R) Iris(TM) Pro Graphics: 5200, 6200, P6300
[    32.265] (II) intel(0): Using Kernel Mode Setting driver: i915, version 1.6.0 20080730
[    32.265] (II) intel(0): SNA compiled: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.914-1~exp1ubuntu4 (Maarten Lankhorst <maarten.lankhorst@ubuntu.com>)
[    32.265] (II) intel(0): SNA compiled for use with valgrind
[    32.266] (--) intel(0): Integrated Graphics Chipset: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4400
[    32.266] (--) intel(0): CPU: x86-64, sse2, sse3, ssse3, sse4.1, sse4.2, avx, avx2
[    32.266] (II) intel(0): Creating default Display subsection in Screen section
[    32.266] (==) intel(0): Depth 24, (--) framebuffer bpp 32
[    32.266] (==) intel(0): RGB weight 888
[    32.266] (==) intel(0): Default visual is TrueColor
[    32.266] (II) intel(0): Output eDP1 has no monitor section
[    32.266] (--) intel(0): Found backlight control interface acpi_video0 (type 'firmware') for output eDP1
[    32.266] (II) intel(0): Output HDMI1 has no monitor section
[    32.266] (--) intel(0): Using a maximum size of 64x64 for hardware cursors
[    32.266] (II) intel(0): Output VIRTUAL1 has no monitor section
[    32.266] (--) intel(0): Output eDP1 using initial mode 1920x1080 on pipe 0
[    32.266] (==) intel(0): TearFree disabled
[    32.266] (==) intel(0): DPI set to (96, 96)
[    32.275] (II) intel(0): SNA initialized with Haswell (gen7.5, gt2) backend
[    32.275] (==) intel(0): Backing store enabled
[    32.275] (==) intel(0): Silken mouse enabled
[    32.275] (II) intel(0): HW Cursor enabled
[    32.275] (II) intel(0): RandR 1.2 enabled, ignore the following RandR disabled message.
[    32.276] (==) intel(0): DPMS enabled
[    32.276] (II) intel(0): [DRI2] Setup complete
[    32.276] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: i965
[    32.276] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: i965
[    32.276] (II) intel(0): direct rendering: DRI2 DRI3 enabled
[    32.276] (II) intel(0): hardware support for Present enabled
[    32.276] (==) intel(0): display hotplug detection enabled
[    32.753] (II) AIGLX: enabled GLX_INTEL_swap_event
[    32.756] (II) intel(0): switch to mode 1920x1080@60.0 on eDP1 using pipe 0, position (0, 0), rotation normal, reflection none
[    32.764] (II) intel(0): Setting screen physical size to 508 x 285
[    32.820] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=3 (/dev/input/event14)
[    32.821] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=7 (/dev/input/event13)
[    32.821] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel HDMI HDMI/DP,pcm=8 (/dev/input/event12)
[    32.822] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel PCH Mic (/dev/input/event10)
[    32.822] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel PCH Headphone (/dev/input/event9)
[    37.600] (II) intel(0): EDID vendor "LGD", prod id 1022
[    37.600] (II) intel(0): Printing DDC gathered Modelines:
[    37.600] (II) intel(0): Modeline "1920x1080"x0.0  138.70  1920 1968 2000 2080  1080 1083 1088 1111 -hsync -vsync (66.7 kHz eP)