Nvidia (proprietary driver) systems will never see a plymouth splash screen (if they boot in less than 8 seconds)

[Daniel van Vugt]

No plymouth screens displayed at all after installing the Nvidia driver (440). It just goes from the BIOS screen to the purple login screen.

On a desktop with no other GPUs (the integrated one has been disabled in the BIOS).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: plymouth-theme-spinner 0.9.4git20200109-0ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-18.22-generic 5.4.24
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-18-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu20
Architecture: amd64
BootLog: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/boot.log'
Date: Fri Mar 20 17:30:22 2020
DefaultPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt/bgrt.plymouth
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-02-03 (46 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Alpha amd64 (20200124)
Lsusb:
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
 Bus 001 Device 004: ID 17ef:6009 Lenovo ThinkPad Keyboard with TrackPoint
 Bus 001 Device 003: ID 045e:0823 Microsoft Corp. Microsoft® Classic IntelliMouse®
 Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0a2b Intel Corp.
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
MachineType: LENOVO 10M7CTO1WW
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-18-generic root=UUID=9b79c6ed-60b4-4ad2-9a38-b901eb96d9ca ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
ProcFB: 0 EFI VGA
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-18-generic root=UUID=9b79c6ed-60b4-4ad2-9a38-b901eb96d9ca ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: plymouth
TextPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 02/06/2018
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: M16KT47A
dmi.board.name: 3102
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: SDK0J40709 WIN 3259627060530
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: None
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrM16KT47A:bd02/06/2018:svnLENOVO:pn10M7CTO1WW:pvrThinkCentreM710s:rvnLENOVO:rn3102:rvrSDK0J40709WIN3259627060530:cvnLENOVO:ct3:cvrNone:
dmi.product.family: ThinkCentre M710s
dmi.product.name: 10M7CTO1WW
dmi.product.sku: LENOVO_MT_10M7_BU_Think_FM_ThinkCentre M710s
dmi.product.version: ThinkCentre M710s
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the report Daniel. Did it use to work? Does the theme make a difference? (if you switch back to ubuntu-logo)?

Could you provide a plymouth debug log
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Plymouth#Enabling_Debugging ?

Also might be worth reporting upstream

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Maybe the problem is just that the initrd is missing renderers/frame-buffer.so ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Daniel, the file should be included, see debian/local/plymouth.hook l169

# copy renderers
copy_exec /usr/lib/@DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH@/plymouth/renderers/frame-buffer.so
copy_exec /usr/lib/@DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH@/plymouth/renderers/drm.so

Also do you use disk encryption? because the content of the initrd should only matter in that scenario since otherwise plytmouth should have access to the /usr content

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I should probably have just kept the conversation upstream:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/issues/103

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Even after hacking a test fix for this together, it seems bug 1869655 is still a bigger issue preventing any early splash. Next cycle maybe...

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Upstream are resisting a proper fix, but that would take months or years anyway. So here's a series of steps that will get us closer to a solution in 20.10:

1. Land this fix upstream: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/merge_requests/109

2. Update Ubuntu/Debian with the attached debdiff (requires the above upstream fix first).

3. Nvidia users or the Nvidia installer can now manually set DeviceTimeout=1 in /usr/share/plymouth/plymouthd.defaults

4. The future is slightly brighter as we carry fewer patches and have a working daemon config file we can use for other things too.

[Rajat Pandita (rajat-pandita)]

I have nvidia-drm.modeset=1 enabled on my Install, and I have an NVME Drive for main Operating System, I can still see the animation, may be my system is booting slower than it should ?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This bug is probably only for Nvidia-only systems. It might not apply to hybrid laptops for example, where the screen is usually connected to an Intel GPU.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

In fact any GPU type could experience a similar bug to this if the graphics hardware gets initialized slower than the rest of the system boots. So Intel users could see similar issues. The main improvement will come from fixing bug 1869655 in future.

[Jan Pfeifer (pfjan)]

Just confirming that I'm still seeing the issue (*) with Ubuntu 20.10.

(*) plymouth splash screen never shows with Nvidia proprietary drivers.

[ROG (xgates)]

Ubuntu 23.04, no splash screen when using Nvidia!

Also, let's not forget, we still can see some console info being rendered on the screen too. It would be so nice, if we can finally have these two solutions fixed.

1. Finally have a nice working boot splash with Nvidia drivers.
2. And no more kernel boot messages appearing on screen when booting.

How many years have we been waiting on these 2? :(

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Those are different issues. And actually the Nvidia-specific problem was fixed some time ago when Nvidia drivers started shipping KMS support enabled by default. So this bug is fixed in all current nvidia-graphics-drivers.

The remaining problems are better covered by bug 1869655 and bug 1970069. But see also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs?field.tag=flickerfreeboot