Zorin and 4 dots text on reboot

General Help
1

Hiya guys!

I'm going nuts for something that I believe I shouldn't, but I want to understand what is wrong and why it happened.
Symptoms are something apparently aestetic only: when rebooting or shutting down I see a very small text like from the '90s on my 32" 4K monitor showing "Zorin" and 4 dots just under the text instead of some nice graphics.

I'm a noobie, very much so with Linux, so I asked for help to some AIs and apparently IDrive online backup software is what messed up my reboot/shutdown fade out phase screen. This is the email that the AI wrote for me to send to IDrive developers. I'ìm going to paste it here so maybe someone smarter than AI can figure out how I can fix this, although it's not a severe issue.

This is the AI output:
I am reporting a reproducible system-level regression caused by the installation of your IDrive for Linux package on Zorin OS (Ubuntu 22.04-based), using proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

Immediately after installing IDrive, the system’s shutdown sequence stops behaving normally. Zorin’s graphical Plymouth shutdown splash disappears entirely. Instead, the system falls back to a text-mode “Zorin” splash with four dots under it (the Plymouth fallback theme rendered when the DRM/KMS handoff fails or the framebuffer is lost before Plymouth terminates).

This problem appears only after installing IDrive, and persists even after completely removing the package, including:

  • systemd services related to IDrive
  • its autostart entries
  • leftover configuration files
  • its user-level processes
  • Plymouth reset and regeneration
  • initrd regeneration
  • NVIDIA driver reinstallation

Everything points to IDrive modifying systemd’s shutdown ordering or introducing a lingering service that forces an early teardown of the graphical stack. The result is a premature unloading of the NVIDIA DRM or a disruption of the KMS transition, causing Plymouth to lose its framebuffer during shutdown.

This behavior strongly suggests that one of IDrive’s systemd units is:

  • running during shutdown at an incorrect target
  • blocking or delaying plymouth-quit.service
  • interacting with graphical.target or multi-user.target improperly
  • or triggering a systemd dependency loop that forces the graphics stack to terminate earlier than expected

For a backup utility, modifying or interfering with the systemd boot/shutdown pipeline is unacceptable and leads to persistent visual degradation of the system’s core UX.

I request that your development team:

  1. Review IDrive’s systemd unit dependencies, especially Before=, After=, and WantedBy= directives.
  2. Confirm that no IDrive components run during shutdown in a way that impacts:
  • plymouth-quit.service
  • gdm.service
  • nvidia-persistenced.service
  • systemd-logind.service
  1. Provide a technical explanation for why IDrive alters the shutdown sequence.
  2. Provide a fix to ensure IDrive never interferes with graphical shutdown on systems using NVIDIA DRM/KMS.

Linux users expect a backup tool to be completely non-invasive. Altering the systemd pipeline is a serious issue.

I'm not 100% sure IDrive was the cause, but it started happening right after I installed their software.

If any of you has suggestions, I'm all ears! Well, not just that... I have limbs and all the rest as well lol

Thanks y'all

What I see is something like this, taken from another user, but of course it shows 18, not 16.
Thanks

Massimo

Screenshot_2025_11_23-2
Screenshot_2025_11_23-2280Ă—202 26.4 KB

2

Welcome to the Forum!

Is it possible that You make a Picture of it and post it here?

1 Like
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Thanks for welcomming me!
Sure, buddy. I've just updated my original post.

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For all those out there who are going to encounter this issue, I've found a culprit and a solution: the trouble was caused initially by IDriver software which triggered the Nvidia driver to behave like a mess, and I found that out by switching to the nouveau driver. So I had tried to reinstall the Nvidia I had before but the issue was there again. Thus the only way was to type these commands:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt -f install
sudo apt purge $(dpkg -l | grep nvidia | awk '{print $2}')
sudo apt autoremove

and then install the Nvidia 570 proprietary (not tested) which is the only one that worked for me, as the others either didn't fix the issue, or they didn't even get installed for my GTX 1060.

I hope it will help someone!

Thanks

Massimo

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