nVIDIA card not working (seems "off") during boot process on x86_64

[Richie Ward]

When I boot up Ubuntu 64bit (Feisty / Gutsy), I do not see the splash screen... my screen is just black and the led on my monitor blinks as if it's not getting a signal, until GDM loads up. I believe this is related to usplash. On an LCD screen, the backlight is off during boot process and screen+backlight come back on when GDM loads.

[Richie Ward (richies)]

Some other notes... I am running Ubuntu Feisty and when X starts, I see the gnome login screen as normal but no splash screen with progress indicator.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Thank you for your bug report.

Richie:
You have (at least) two different issues here and bug reports only really work if you stick to one issue per report. The first issue is that you don't see anything on the framebuffer during boot. The second appears to be that Feisty (you didn't indicate which version of Ubuntu you were running so I'm guessing) doesn't ship with binary drivers that support you card. You need to choose which issue you want this particular bug to be about and spin the other issue off into its own separate bug report.

With regard to the later issue, your card is new and binary drivers that supported it were not out at the time of Feisty's release. The nvidia-glx-new drivers as currently shipped are based off 97xx series of drivers and these do not list your card as being supported (http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-9755/README/appendix-a.html ). Looking at previous releases, it seems unlikely that Ubuntu Feisty will add binary driver support for your card during its life which means you will have to use 3rd party non-Ubuntu drivers to enable support (in theory when Gusty comes out this problem should be rectified). restricted-manager can only automatically enable binary driver support for cards that the Ubuntu repositories have drivers for...

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Setting to needsinfo pending reply from Richie.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

My earlier comment about Feisty not getting later drivers is looking incorrect. See Bug #121096 for details...

[Richie Ward (richies)]

I would like to note this was for Ubuntu x64 and i386 wasn't so bad.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Richie:
Bug reports cannot be about more than one problem. Which issue did you want to make this bug about? (additionally can you indicate whether your motherboard has an AMD64 chip in it)

[Richie Ward (richies)]

Okay I want to make this bug report about no splash screen showing during bootup on 64bit but this does not happen on 32bit.. I believe even gutsy has missing the spash screen too. I have a Intel core 2 duo and not a AMD64

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Richie:
I would recommend updating the description and title of this bug report to reflect the usplash issue...

[Richie Ward (richies)]

Done, sorry I messed up this bug report :-(

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Richie:
I don't know what you mean - I've just checked it now and it looks fine to me....

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for restricted-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Olivier Cortès (olive)]

Hi, just a "me too" to confirm the bug:

My machine is a notebook, Dell Precision M4300 (Intel Core2 Duo x86_64 / nVIDIA Quadro FX360M, LCD screen 1920x1200, "up-to-date" Gutsy x86_64, nvidia-glx-new installed and running fine).
The problem is : when grub runs the kernel, i see the message "kernel alive..." and the next message line, then the screen font changes, then the screen goes totally black (dpms off I think because not even backlight is on !) ; disk led blinks during boot process, but screen keeps beiing off ; it switches back on when GDM comes in, and from then everything is fine. I just can't see anything of the boot process. Editing boot entry in grub and removing "quiet splash" from append line brings a noisy but totally normal boot sequence (screen doesn't switch off at all).

This happens *only* on Gutsy x86_64. On i386 version, usplash loads fine, I can see the boot progress, no problem. (I switched from i386 to x86_64 today, so this is a fresh but up-to-date Gusty install ; from tribe5 with dist-upgrade).

I don't know what info to provide next. Advise appreciated.

[Olivier Cortès (olive)]

Should I add that this doesn't happen with Gusty Install/Live CD, not i386 nor x86_64. The 2 version show a normal boot sequence with a nice usplash during boot. Only when system is installed on hard drive *and* x86_64 version leads to a black screen with the nVIDIA Quadro.

[Olivier Cortès (olive)]

Rebuilding the initrd with "sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-`uname -r`" doesn't resolve the problem. At next reboot screen is still black.

[Gary Robson (gary-indstrength)]

Just another "Me Too", this time for Kubuntu Gutsy beta 64bit version

System Spec:
CPU: Intel Q6600
RAM: 4GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-965P-DS4
Graphics Card: Nvidia 8600 GTS (PCI express)

I get this issue both with the live CD and my final installed system (and also with tribe5 ubuntu live cd a few days ago)

Once grub is finished and I see the Kernel Alive message, the screen goes blank, the monitor powers down and I get nothing until KDM loads up

[Pierre-Yves (py-bretecher)]

Same issue for me :
no splash screen with AMD64 versions of ubuntu (Feisty or Gusty Tribe or latest beta) neither with LiveCD nor with the final install.
Things are OK with festy 32bits (not tested with Gusty 32bits).

My config is based on a Gygabyte MB : P35-DS3P with Geforce8500GT and Q6600 processor.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

(Might be related to Bug #116103 )

[Jacob Boström (jakethecak3)]

Same here:

Intel quad core.
4GB RAM
Nvidia 8800 GTS 640MB
7.10 64bit

LiveCD fails to load, textbased install works, and then I edit the grub menu on the fly and add no, to the end of the kernel init line, in front of splash.

/boot/grub/menu.lst

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=ab2ed664-f082-46bd-9e26-efc15dd91b19 ro quiet nosplash

There is about 10-15 other bug reports describing this splash bug, just search for '64 black screen'.

[Pierre-Yves (py-bretecher)]

I found a workaround for my config :

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=454392&page=3

And I can tell it was also related to Bug #116103 in my case since the fix solved also this second issue.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 147623, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.