Screen goes blank after few seconds

General Help
1

After installing updates today everything worked solid few hours until restart.

Device details: PC, single 4k monitor, intel i5 (without integrated GPU), AMD RX 6800 external GPU

After reaching login screen, I have barely enough time to type the password. Screen goes solid dark, while system is still operational. I can restart monitor to get ~5s, but it goes dark again.

Booting into previous kernel does not help.

What does work (sorta):

  • booting into recovery mode, then just pass through to resume boot (Enter + Enter)

It works except the Gnome animations are all gone, video playback is choppy and external GPU is not being shown by Mission Control (flatpak app similar to Window Task manager).

I am curious if I can recover from this without being forced to full OS reinstall.

2

Hello and welcome,
I had the same problem and it come from the linux-firmware update who get regression.
I did this, so go in recovery and try to downgrade :

sudo apt install linux-firmware=20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.26

then mark linux-firmware as hold

sudo apt-mark hold linux-firmware
apt-mark showhold #you should see linux-firmware in the list

the regenerate initramfs with the good firmware :

uname -r #your actual kernel should be the output
sudo update-initramfs -u -k 'the result of uname -r'
sudo reboot
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3

Just out of curiosity - since I tried to downgrade the firmware on Linux Mint once, too, because of fan problems after an update, and it didn't fix my problem.

Is the initramfs also updated by a reboot, or do you have to run the command sudo update-initramfs... explicitly?
If so, now I know why it didn't help, but no one told me when I asked in forum.

4

You need to run the command.
Why ? because the bad version of linux-firmware did it when you install it, and if you downgrade, you need to 'register" this version :wink:

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5

Thank you for the information! I hadn't run that command. Now I'll know to keep that in mind in the future (I hope I don't forget it next time because it doesn't happen that often, after all).

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6

Thank you very much. It is honestly the first time I hit a bug like this over 4+ years of using ZorinOS. So nice to see the cube animation back, lol :sweat_smile:.

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7

This also fixed my issue after recent update with screen going half blank, at log in screen, then completely orange shortly after login. My GPU is a RX 6900XT. Hopefully not a widespread issue with RX 6000 series cards. Appreciate all who posted in this thread.

1 Like