No visual output shortly after boot

submitted by Corr

Lately, when booting up my linux machine (Fedora 39 KDE), everything looks good until about 30s after I log in. Then both screens go black with no output, and shortly after that they light up as if there is a signal but I don't seen anything.

I've tried accessing a TTY but nothing changes on the displays. The only solution I can find is pressing the reset button on the PC, and then I have no problem on the following boot. I'm not really too sure where to start looking regarding solutions. Would really appreciate any input you guys have to solving this problem.

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5 Comments

just_another_person

SSH in after it goes dark and start looking through logs, or start digging after that second reboot. Honestly it doesn't sound like a driver issue if things are fine up until a certain point after login. Might be dealing with something like a phantom display being detected and switched to, or a bad card getting stuck mode switching or something.

Logs, logs, and more logs.

Corr [OP]

I updated kernel just now and maybe that will fix it. If not, then I will try reading the logs. Any ideas as to what to look for? I looked briefly through journalctl and I wasn't really too sure what to keep an eye out for. I know red is bad, but everything in red that I looked for didn't seem related (mostly networking stuff)

just_another_person

Just check all the usual suspects: Xorg, syslog, messages, journals for systemd services. Do you have integrated graphics, a card, or both? Trying switching to one over the other and see if you still have an issue.

Björn Tantau

First thing I would do is activate the SSH server so that you can still access the PC with the broken display.

Do you have an nVidia card and/or use Wayland? If you have an nVidia card reinstalling the drivers might be enough although it doesn't sound like the common problem that the kernel module isn't built for the current kernel.

Corr [OP]

I just did a kernel update. I'm gonna see if that fixes it, but enabling the SSH server is a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion