Plymouth doesn't always show splash screen if DRM drivers are installed in initrd

[Marcos Alano]

I just updated to plymouth 24.004.60-2ubuntu6 but even the splash screen is enabled, it doesn't show, just text during boot.
I'm using driver 570.133.07-0ubuntu2. When I was using versiong 570.86.16-0ubuntu4 the splash screen worked as should.

This bug is a spin off of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/2103533, where Daniel asked to create a new bug report about it.
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.32.0-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
DefaultPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt/bgrt.plymouth
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 25.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-11-26 (1219 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" - Release amd64 (20211012)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Dell G15 5511
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
Package: plymouth 24.004.60-2ubuntu6
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.14.0-13-generic root=UUID=a15c1e1a-d162-4e98-98e6-bbc6e85a39c3 ro intel_iommu=on iommu=pt quiet splash crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,32G-64G:1024M,64G-128G:2048M,128G-:4096M vt.handoff=7
ProcFB: 0 nvidia-drmdrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.14.0-13-generic root=UUID=a15c1e1a-d162-4e98-98e6-bbc6e85a39c3 ro intel_iommu=on iommu=pt quiet splash crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,32G-64G:1024M,64G-128G:2048M,128G-:4096M vt.handoff=7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.14.0-13.13-generic 6.14.0
Tags: package-from-proposed plucky
TextPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
Uname: Linux 6.14.0-13-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to plucky on 2025-03-07 (22 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dialout dip docker i2c kvm libvirt lpadmin lxd plugdev sambashare sbuild sudo vboxusers video whoopsie
_MarkForUpload: True
dmi.bios.date: 12/16/2024
dmi.bios.release: 1.34
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.34.0
dmi.board.name: 0836K6
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.34.0:bd12/16/2024:br1.34:svnDellInc.:pnDellG155511:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0836K6:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:sku0A70:
dmi.product.family: GSeries
dmi.product.name: Dell G15 5511
dmi.product.sku: 0A70
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.32.0-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
DefaultPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt/bgrt.plymouth
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 25.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-11-26 (1219 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" - Release amd64 (20211012)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Dell G15 5511
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
Package: plymouth 24.004.60-2ubuntu6
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.14.0-13-generic root=UUID=a15c1e1a-d162-4e98-98e6-bbc6e85a39c3 ro intel_iommu=on iommu=pt quiet splash crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,32G-64G:1024M,64G-128G:2048M,128G-:4096M vt.handoff=7
ProcFB: 0 nvidia-drmdrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.14.0-13-generic root=UUID=a15c1e1a-d162-4e98-98e6-bbc6e85a39c3 ro intel_iommu=on iommu=pt quiet splash crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,32G-64G:1024M,64G-128G:2048M,128G-:4096M vt.handoff=7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.14.0-13.13-generic 6.14.0
Tags: package-from-proposed plucky
TextPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
Uname: Linux 6.14.0-13-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to plucky on 2025-03-07 (22 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dialout dip docker i2c kvm libvirt lpadmin lxd plugdev sambashare sbuild sudo vboxusers video whoopsie
_MarkForUpload: True
dmi.bios.date: 12/16/2024
dmi.bios.release: 1.34
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.34.0
dmi.board.name: 0836K6
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.34.0:bd12/16/2024:br1.34:svnDellInc.:pnDellG155511:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0836K6:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:sku0A70:
dmi.product.family: GSeries
dmi.product.name: Dell G15 5511
dmi.product.sku: 0A70
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
---
ProblemType: Bug
ApportVersion: 2.32.0-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
DefaultPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/bgrt/bgrt.plymouth
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 25.04
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-11-26 (1219 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" - Release amd64 (20211012)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Dell G15 5511
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
Package: plymouth 24.004.60-2ubuntu6
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.14.0-13-generic root=UUID=a15c1e1a-d162-4e98-98e6-bbc6e85a39c3 ro intel_iommu=on iommu=pt quiet splash crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,32G-64G:1024M,64G-128G:2048M,128G-:4096M vt.handoff=7
ProcFB: 0 nvidia-drmdrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.14.0-13-generic root=UUID=a15c1e1a-d162-4e98-98e6-bbc6e85a39c3 ro intel_iommu=on iommu=pt quiet splash crashkernel=2G-4G:320M,4G-32G:512M,32G-64G:1024M,64G-128G:2048M,128G-:4096M vt.handoff=7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.14.0-13.13-generic 6.14.0
Tags: package-from-proposed plucky
TextPlymouth: /usr/share/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
Uname: Linux 6.14.0-13-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to plucky on 2025-03-07 (22 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dialout dip docker i2c kvm libvirt lpadmin lxd plugdev sambashare sbuild sudo vboxusers video whoopsie
_MarkForUpload: True
dmi.bios.date: 12/16/2024
dmi.bios.release: 1.34
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.34.0
dmi.board.name: 0836K6
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.34.0:bd12/16/2024:br1.34:svnDellInc.:pnDellG155511:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0836K6:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct10:cvr:sku0A70:
dmi.product.family: GSeries
dmi.product.name: Dell G15 5511
dmi.product.sku: 0A70
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

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[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

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[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This reminds me of bug 1869655, which may be worse on Nvidia systems if there is no driver loading early enough.

  got add event for device /dev/fb0
  ignoring since we only handle subsystem graphics devices after timeout

Basically Red Hat designed it to wait for and prefer the full graphics driver. But that driver can take so long to load that it's waited longer than the boot process takes and no splash was ever displayed.

It might also be because the boot GPU has been hidden. I can tell this machine has two GPUs; Intel and Nvidia. But the Intel GPU is no longer listed as a PCI device. Though that might not matter if the simple framebuffer used during early boot is still available via BIOS interfaces...

  creating objects for frame buffer devices
  found device /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0/efi-framebuffer.0/graphics/fb0
  device is initialized
  found node /dev/fb0
  device subsystem is graphics
  found frame buffer device /dev/fb0
  trying to find associated drm node for fb device (path: pci-0000:01:00.0-platform-efi-framebuffer.0)
  no card entry!

Please try adding this kernel parameter:

  plymouth.use-simpledrm

I'm hoping that will fix it but this is probably a duplicate of bug 1869655 either way.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The difference between 570.133.07-0ubuntu2 and 570.86.16-0ubuntu4 might just be that one of them installs in the initrd and the other does not. If that's the case then the old driver really just provided a weak workaround and we need a stronger solution outlined in bug 1869655.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

I'm confused; what's efi-framebuffer.0 doing here? Our kernel does not have CONFIG_FB_EFI set.
And where is SimpleDRM?

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Oh look:

[ 3.906558] fbcon: nvidia-drmdrmfb (fb0) is primary device
[ 3.906559] fbcon: Deferring console take-over
[ 3.906561] nvidia 0000:01:00.0: [drm] fb0: nvidia-drmdrmfb frame buffer device

NVIDIA has enabled `nvidia-drm.fbdev` by default.
I could verify that on my machine installing 570.133.07-0ubuntu2 from plucky-proposed
But that **shouldn't** matter: NVIDIA now simply behaves like every other DRM driver in providing an fbdev.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Marcos, the CurrentDmesg.txt file starts off a bit late.
Please run `sudo dmesg | tee dmesg.txt` and attach dmesg.txt here.
Hopefully that will start from the beginning.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

Sorry, my machine is up for some days and dmesg doesn't have the part I think you need anymore. I'm sending the output of the command `journalctl -b` that shows all the logs for the boot, including talking about simpledrm.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Thank you. Looks normal to me :/

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Is it possible we are looking at a PlymouthDebug.txt that does not match the current boot?

I don't see `plymouth:debug` in the current kernel commandline, so presumably it was generated at a different time?

On a positive side, I can reproduce by generating an initrd with dracut (https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/please-try-out-dracut/48975)

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

I noticed that both nouveau and nvidia-drm end up on the initrd, which sounds problematic. However we do not want either driver in the initrd. Indeed `dracut --force --omit-drivers="nouveau nvidia-drm"` simply works.

I think we should make `/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/45drm/module-setup.sh` only include the tiny drivers, like our current initramfs scripts.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

And I'm assuming that Marcos is also using dracut, because of your comments in bug 2103798 and other traces of dracut in the logs.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

You are probably right. I removed the debug option days before I updated the driver. I will add again, reboot and send you the logs.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

Here it's the debug log for Plymouth. Fresh off the oven!

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I executed that command to create the initrd with dracut without the drivers. Here is the log for the boot. I still see some logs (maybe from plymouth:debug?), but after that I see the splash screen.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

> I'm confused; what's efi-framebuffer.0 doing here? Our kernel does not have CONFIG_FB_EFI set.

That's just a device path, not evidence of CONFIG_FB_EFI (efifb.c). It's probably coming from CONFIG_SYSFB / CONFIG_SYSFB_SIMPLEFB which includes sysfb_efi.c as that looks like what simpledrm is meant to use.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

> I noticed that both nouveau and nvidia-drm end up on the initrd, which sounds problematic.
> However we do not want either driver in the initrd. Indeed
> `dracut --force --omit-drivers="nouveau nvidia-drm"` simply works.
>
> I think we should make `/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/45drm/module-setup.sh` only include the tiny drivers,
> like our current initramfs scripts.

Sounds like part regression (unless this is a user customization) and part unfinished work in our Nvidia packaging.

- Nouveau should never be in initrd as the main open source drivers were removed from it in 24.04.
- Nvidia might install in initrd still because I never implemented the required packaging changes to keep it out.

But those are just space/time optimizations, and not really fixes for this.

Marcos, please also remember to try 'plymouth.use-simpledrm' because if that works then we should just call this a duplicate of bug 1869655. And even if 'plymouth.use-simpledrm' doesn't work, this might still be a duplicate of bug 1869655 while we're missing https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/merge_requests/323

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Aha! Now the plymouth log makes sense.

This looks innocent enough:
00:00:04.091 ../src/plugins/renderers/drm/plugin.c:977:load_driver : Opening '/dev/dri/card0'
00:00:04.091 ../src/plugins/renderers/drm/plugin.c:981:load_driver : open failed: No such file or directory

because presumably we are trying to open SimpleDRM just as the nvidia-drm driver is loading, which removes SimpleDRM (starting from NVIDIA 570.133.07-0ubuntu2, but it could happen with any other DRM driver as well).

But!

ply-device-manager somewhat ingenuously treats any ENOENT as a "the drm plugin is not installed" at $libdir/plymouth/renderers/drm.so

So it completely gives up on DRM, and we never get a graphical splash screen.

This is fixed upstream by https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/commit/c06ee92bafc586d20710c39a6f0d38651b769ffd

This also explains why @ahasenack mentioned in bug 2103798 that he *sometimes* sees a graphical splash screen and sometimes not, as it's a race condition whether we fail to open SimpleDRM with ENOENT or not.
While excluding all DRM drivers from initrd also "fixes" the issue by making SimpleDRM never go away so early, so that we cannot possibly fail to open it with ENOENT.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

About dracut: we should at least make it match the behaviour of the current initramfs scripts, which is to only include the tiny drivers (plus vboxvideo and virtio apparently) but I would also consider removing all DRM drivers and just use SimpleDRM that's built-into the kernel.
Maybe that second option is more aimed at 25.10 though.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I will do some tests during the day. The first one was removing `plymouth:debug` from GRUB and keep using the initrd without nvidia driver.
It did work as expected, so the logs I saw quickly was debug for Plymouth.
So removing the drivers from the initrd did the trick.
Today I want to add `plymouth.use-simpledrm` to grub as Daniel requested together with a initrd with the drivers, since we already know if we don't add the drivers to the initrd things will work.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I did the second test (tbh, I was expecting to be busier today), and using `plymouth.use-simpledrm` option set in the GRUB didn't fix the problem. The initrd had the nvidia drivers, but my test was to check if even with the drivers Plymouth would respect and use simpledrm instead, which didn't.
Do you want logs for this experiment? I disabled `plymouth:debug` for now but I can enable again and provide you with the logs to check why isn't using simpledrm, or if it is, what is going wrong.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I have a laptop that has an integrated Intel GPU and a discrete NVIDIA GPU. What I did in the BIOS was to disable the integrated one and do everything with the discrete one. I don't get Optimus to change use between them, but my laptop is almost a desktop with a battery since I keep plugged on AC all the time.
So, because of that I just have /dev/dri/card1 and not a /dev/dri/card0.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Thank you Marcos, that's enough information. I can reproduce the issue myself and have a fix

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

I am currently preparing the dracut update for the plymouth module not pulling in the drm module (i.e. excluding all drm drivers).

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I will test the fix when available on proposed.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

@bdrung the dracut drm module includes other seemingly important drivers like "privacy-screen" and possibly more. Perhaps we need a minimal-drm like the current initramfs-tools:

 minimal_drm)
  # Minimal required set of Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) drivers for video
  modules="$modules =drivers/gpu/drm/tiny vboxvideo virtio-gpu"
  # if there is a privacy screen then its driver must be loaded before the
  # kms driver will bind, otherwise its probe() will return -EPROBE_DEFER
  # So include privacy screen providers
  # atm all providers live under drivers/platform/x86
  _call_dracut_install -s "drm_privacy_screen_register" "=drivers/platform/x86"

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

@aleasto I created a simple-drm module: https://github.com/dracut-ng/dracut-ng/pull/1263
Then we would switch modules.d/45plymouth/module-setup.sh from drm to simple-drm. Does that look good?

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Yes, I think that makes sense.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Marcos, if you're comfortable with PPAs I have uploaded the plymouth fix here for testing: https://launchpad.net/~aleasto/+archive/ubuntu/plymouth-tests

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

I added the PPA, installed the packages and rebooted, and it worked. Do you need any logs?

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

You did not mention invoking dracut. Is that because you set-up the system to always use dracut, rather than only when manually invoked with `dracut --force`?

I do not need any logs, thanks.

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

Yes. I replaced initramfs-tools with dracut. Also I executed update-initramfs (from dracut) to get the initrd regenerated.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Just a reminder we would like a fix in the Nvidia driver too, to not install in initrd. Although that could be considered a longer term cleanup and moved to a new bug. Assuming it hasn't been done already.

[Alessandro Astone (aleasto)]

Updated debdiff with DEP-3 headers

[Marcos Alano (mhalano)]

Thanks. When available on proposed I will test it.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package plymouth - 24.004.60-2ubuntu7

---------------
plymouth (24.004.60-2ubuntu7) plucky; urgency=medium

  * Add ply-device-manager-Revert-Fall-back-to-text-plugin-if-no-.patch to fix
    a race condition that makes the graphical splash screen never appear when
    DRM drivers are installed in initrd (LP: #2105377).

 -- Alessandro Astone <email address hidden> Wed, 02 Apr 2025 12:52:11 +0200

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package dracut - 106-2ubuntu5

---------------
dracut (106-2ubuntu5) plucky; urgency=medium

  * update-initramfs: add -s parameter
  * Avoid updating the initramfs twice for some cases (LP: #1466965)
  * add simple-drm module
  * plymouth: Only pull in the SimpleDRM driver by default (LP: #2105377)

 -- Benjamin Drung <email address hidden> Wed, 02 Apr 2025 10:39:23 +0200

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Removing the Nvidia driver task because it's going to confuse people. That should be an enhancement with its own separate bug.