When booting the Linux Mint computer there is a black screen with a cursor in the upper left corner. Solving the problem.

Introduction

The problem appeared on a test computer (breadboard) after updating Linux Mint 21.3 to 22.
Booting went through Grub and starting SystemD services, and stopped before initializing the user profile. On the black screen, the cursor in the upper left corner is lit, loading the OS ends here, since the text mode does not change to graphic.

My suspicions fell on a kernel update (to 6.8 or 6.17), but later I downgraded the kernel version to 6.1 and nothing changed. The reason is the “i915” graphics driver for the built-in Intel video card, which is visible when loading - it writes an error about incorrect resource allocation.

On a computer - a prototype with a black screen, old hardware: motherboard FOXCONN 865G7MF-SH with chipset Intel 865G chipset and integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2 graphics core. It's possible that support for older video cards is getting worse in new versions of Linux.

The kernel is responsible for supporting image output on the screen of computers with Intel video adapters at the beginning of the OS startup, then the Intel "i915" driver from the package xserver-xorg-video-intel. Apparently, when the i915 driver was initialized, it froze. The key combination Ctrl+Alt+F1 and Ctrl+Alt+F2 did not work. The main thing is that the user's desktop was not shown.Black screen with a blinking cursor. the PC responded only to a single press of the power button: the PC shutdown now.

To find out your video card model:

sudo apt install hwinfo
hwinfo --gfxcard

or

 lspci | grep -E 'VGA|3D'

To find out the current driver in use:

lsmod

In my case, the Foxconn motherboard has a built-in “Intel 865G” video card, “Springdale” family, which contains the 2nd generation Intel Extreme Graphics graphics core. But the i915 driver is the same for all integrated Intel video cards up to generation Xe (Gen12). The main thing is to make sure that the chip is from Intel. If so, let's continue.

Method No. 1: temporary solution to the "black screen" to continue loading Linux OS

1) When you boot your computer, when “Grub” appears, quickly press Shift several times to display the Grub menu.
(On motherboards with UEFI you need to press Esc).

2) In the Grub menu on the selected OS line, press the "e" key.

3) Add another parameter “nomodeset” to the line “vmlinuz” after “quiet splash”.

4) Continue loading - F10.

The nomodeset option prohibits initialization and use of the video card driver. Instead, a fault-tolerant VESA driver will be used, which is compatible with all video cards.

Method No. 2: Permanent solution to the black screen problem when loading Linux OS

1) Open the file for editing /etc/default/grub

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

2) In the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=

add parameter "nomodeset.

For example:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

or

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"

Save file and exit: Ctrl+S, Ctrl+X.

3) Update Grub configuration

sudo update-grub

Features of using the nomodeset parameter and the VESA driver

No hardware acceleration in VESA mode

АппFast video acceleration in the new OS Linux Mint 22 and Ubuntu 24, Debian 12 runs on built-in Intel graphics cards of generation 8 and above with the i915 driver. (To offload the CPU when playing video, you need to install the intel-media-va-driver or intel-media-va-driver-non-free package).

Therefore, with old video cards of the Gen1 - Gen7 generations, hardware video acceleration is not available in the new OS in any case. Therefore, you can use nomodest without consequences.

List of Intel graphics card generations

Modern video cards that will suffer from using the nomodeset option:

• Gen8 - Intel HD Graphics, HD Graphics 5xxx, 6xxxx, in Atom x5-Z83xx, Celeron N3xxx, Core i3-50xxU, Core i7-5x00U, etc. processors. (release 2014-15 and newer)
• Gen9 - Intel HD Graphics 5xx, HD Graphics 6xx, UHD Graphics 6xx, Iris Plus Graphics 6xx (Apolo Lake, Skylake, Gemini Lake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake 2016-18)
• Gen11 - UHD Graphics on Core i3-10xx, i5-10xx, i7-10xx processors (Ice Lake, 2019)
• Gen12 - UHD Graphics 7xx and Iris Xe Graphic in Core i3-11xxx, i5-11xxx, i7-11xxx processors (Rocket Lake, Tiger Lake - 2020)
• Gen12.2 - UHD Graphics 7xx and Iris Xe Graphic in Pentium Gold G7400, Core i3-12xxx, i5-12xxx, i7-12xxx processors (Alder Lake, Raptor Lake - 2021)
• Gen12.5 and Gen12.7 (Arc3, Arc5, Arc7 and Arc3 mobile, Arc5 mobile, Arc7 mobile, 2021-23)
  *Intel Arc Alchemist for workstations (2023)

Problem with 16:9 screen aspect ratio in VESA mode

It may happen that the image is displayed after being fully loaded, but it has incorrect proportions on a screen with an aspect ratio of 16:9.

Older video adapters do not support screen resolutions with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
The list of screen resolutions supported by the video card can be displayed with the command:

hwinfo --framebuffer 

The VESA driver when using nomodeset does not know all screen resolutions.

Basic VESA video modes:

• 640×480×32
• 800×600×32
• 1024×768×32
• 1280×1024×32
• 1368×768×32
• 1400×1050×32

If the supported resolutions do not match, you will have to replace either the monitor or the video card. For example, the 1280x1024 mode is exactly supported by many 19" monitors.

Non-standard screen resolutions can be added manually using xrandr as written in the article "How to change display resolution from the Linux command line", but only if nomodeset is not used.

With the nomodeset option (or with the legacy i915.modeset=0 parameter), the choice of resolutions is limited, while the required 19:6 aspect ratio may not be available, and the monitor is named "None-1". Adding a resolution using xrandr was successful, but setting the monitor mode to "None-1" caused an error in xrandr about the number of monitors not matching.

Method number 3: solving the “black screen” problem when loading Linux by installing a separate AGP or PCIe video card

Instead of the built-in video iGPU, you can use a separate PCI express video adapter (discrete video card). Since it will use a different driver, for example, Radeon or Nvidia, the problem will not arise if you install the video card driver offered by the manufacturer or in the Start - Settings - Driver Manager.

Linux Boot Diagnostics

To reproduce the black screen error after the nomodeset parameter:

1) open the system file for editing /etc/default/grub:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

2) remove from variable GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT опцию nomodest,

3) save the file Ctrl+S, Ctrl+X

4) update the Grub configuration and restart the PC

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

5)The system will freeze upon startup. Briefly press the power button and the PC will start to turn off, turn on the PC with the power button.
6) When loading, at the moment the “Grub” message appears, hold down the Shift key.
7) In the Grub2 menu, press “e” and in the “vmlinuz” line again add the parameter after “ro”"nomodeset", continue starting with the function key "F10".
8)When the system boots successfully, view the system log of the previous boot(unsuccessful, without nomodest option):

sudo journalctl -b-1

or

sudo journalctl -b-2

where:
-b - boot
-1 - предыдущая загрузка,
-2 - загрузка перед предыдущей т.д.

In my case there were errors

• lightdm: gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file.

Other methods that don't work

Also, you can try lower kernel version (downgrade) using Mainline utilities to 6.0 - 6.2 or further downgrade the kernel version (for example, to 5.15) using the "ppa:canonical-kernel-team/proposed" repository, as written in the article "Install Linux Kernel 5.x on Ubuntu / Linux Mint".

Also a dubious method is kernel launch keys to disable ACPI, because in this case, on a laptop, for example, the brightness of the backlight will no longer be adjusted, and on a desktop PC there will be no control over the power of the central processor.

• noapic noacpi nosplash irqpoll.

You can also reinstall the lightdm window manager:

• Ctrl+Alt+F1
• systemctl stop lightdm
• sudo apt reinstall lightdm
• systemctl start lightdm
• Ctrl+Alt+F7

!!!!Conclusion: because the problem is black screen obviously associated with the driver i915 for integrated Intel video cards, the easiest way is to install an external PCIe video card in PCI x16 slot or, as in my case, you need an AGP video card.

A similar problem is discussed in the article Fixing the error "Finished record runlevel change in UTMP"- solution by installing a proprietary nVidia driver for the corresponding GeForce GT 610 (GF619) video card.

Sources:

• Linux.org
• StackExchange
• microsin.net

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