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March 16th, 2018 01:00

Lattitude 5490 - kernel 4.15 - black screen - inteldrmfb - i915.modeset=0

 After installation of either Archlinux and Debian, I boot either Linux and after a few line of messeges I get blank/black screen.

I found that 'nomodeset' or 'i915.modeset=0' allows to get login but I have problems with running Xorg (no screens found, xrandr - no devices found)
Since I have no logs during the boot with blank/black screen I took a picture just before (added 'debug' kernel parameter)

The last message line before getting blank screen is: "fb: switching to inteldrmfb from EFI VGA"

To summarize:

1. Without modesetting disabled the system does not reach a console login. The result is that for a quater of second I see the screen with some messages which I took picture in my first post. Then the screen becomes black, I mean the there is black light on the screen but I can do nothing (Ctrl-Alt-F2 does not work). I cannot login even blindly to power off. Neither I have any records in the journal - simply as if the booting process is non-existing in logs. The final line before the screen goes black is "fb: switching to inteldrmfb from EFI VGA"
2. While with modesetting the journal log is in may post #2. I can login. From the journal (link in post #2) I see that EFI VGA frame buffer is used: "[    5.722465] fb0: EFI VGA frame buffer device" instead of inteldrmfb. For now I see this difference which make to continue displaying boot messages.
3. I added nvidia module to /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf blacklist. No positive results. 

Other than that I can say that the same situation is on debian installed on the same laptop. Both for debian and arch I have the same kernel 4.15. On kernel 4.14 both debian and archlinux (linux-lts) the difference is that the sole i915.modeset=0 is not enough to see the console login screen - instead I have to pass "nomodeset" to kernel parameters to get the login prompt.

Any help?

13 Posts

March 17th, 2018 04:00

I checked that kernel 4.9 hangs at "fb: switching to inteldrmfb from EFI VGA", but in this case the screen does not get black, I can see all the boot messages then I have to press power button to switch off the laptop.

Then I compiled kernel 4.4 and in this case without any nomodeset or i915.modeset=0 I get login prompt. However in the output of dmesg there is no line about switching to inteldrmfb from EFI VGA after which the laptop hangs (kernel 4.9) or the screen becomes black/blank (with backlight)

I also filed a bug report here:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=105549

13 Posts

March 28th, 2018 14:00

As you can see from the recent post from Jean on freedesktop bug page (link above), the problem can be related to the BIOS upgrade because the initial BIOS 1.0.8 worked for him. However in my case, before installing Linux I had upgraded BIOS. How to pass this info to Dell engineers taking care od this Latitude model?

4 Posts

March 31st, 2018 04:00

Hello rafal78, 

 

Have you found a solution ?

 

Thanks.

13 Posts

April 2nd, 2018 10:00

Hello _ad,

I think there is no better solution than to wait for the next version of BIOS. I hope Dell will fix this annoying issue soon.

4 Posts

April 4th, 2018 13:00

Hello

Hope they fixe quickly nomodest is not great 

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