Black Screen after Installation

[tmench23]

Hello,

Trying to install on Minisforum UM690
CPU : AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX
GPU : Radeon 680M

Basically as title says, after installing on the SSD, when I reboot the screen stays black.

[ruineka]

Similar situation to the Steam Deck with the recent update. After installing when you boot into the OS it's just a black screen.

Can you attempt to use a keyboard and press CTRL + ALT +F3 to see if anything comes up on the screen?

[tmench23]

@ruineka , unfortunately nothing seems to pop up

[ruineka]

@ruineka , unfortunately nothing seems to pop up

Same as the Steam Deck... Interesting, apologies for the troubles I need to figure out what's causing this.

[tmench23]

Appreciate your time with it! I doubt I'll be of much use, but let me know if I can help in anyway

[mavericm1]

I posted on the reddit sub about this with my lenovo laptop. @ruineka with some effort you can get ctrl + alt + f3 to show an underscore and even a login prompt but its in some kind of loop where it will go away quickly after you see it. Its almost like what i believe to be the gamescope session is continually trying to start and failing in a loop or something if i had to guess. Is there anyway i can boot my laptop on a liveusb linux distro chroot and force it into a desktop session ? on next boot

[mavericm1]

i've tried using a liveboot to change the default session however i'm clueless when it comes to btrfs filesystems and no matter how i've attempted to mount the filesystem as readwrite i can't change files on the fs and files are unwritable

[aqxa1]

I have a similar issue with a RX 6800 in a GPU passthrough VM, although switching VTs and logging in does work. gamescope-session still causes a black screen on restart, however. nvm, it's now loaded.

[j9p0]

I have a similar issue with a gtx 970. Tried a older installer but no luck. Can press crt+alt+f3 to get a login in prompt. That than disperse after 20 secconds

[snoopyjoe]

I'm having the same issue. Ctrl+Alt+F3 displays the login for about 3 seconds then blank. I'm starting to believe it's Nvidia 900 series related. My box with a GTX 1070ti updated to v39 and gamepadui with no issues all be with some stutters. My other box with a GTX 960 2gb just has a blank screen. Even after a complete format and clean install.

I was able to login with "gamer" and type gamescope and got these results. Sorry for the bad picture. Trying to press Ctrl+Alt+F3 and take a picture.

[FleischKarussel]

My error message:

[dhitchcock]

I think you're right about the 900 nvidias, I have had this problem with two very different computers, one with a 970M and one a 980.

[ruineka]

The 900 series Nvidia cards have issues using gamescope for some reason. The 10 series and newer "work" as good as anyone can expect Nvidia to work in it's current shape, but it seems either the 900 series lacks support for a required feature or their is a bug in the driver breaking anything older than Pascal GPUs.

For users with this broken setup can you try switching to the old big picture mode and see if games run at all? To do this get into the TTY and enter 'chimera-session bigpicture'. I'm curious if vulkan is failing entirely or just gamescope specifically.

[snoopyjoe]

Yeah I read on another Linux gaming forum that someone told them their 980 wouldn't work. I did try TTY and "chimera-session bigpicture" and it loaded up but only for a few minutes. It eventually went blank again. It seems a simple Steam update will force the gamepadui mode again. I think there is a way to stick with --prefer-vk-device, but I stopped reading up once night turned to day.

I eventually gave up and purchased a 5600XT for $130. I'm just kicking myself in the butt because I just bought the 1070Ti over the holidays and probably should spent a tiny bit more and got a 5700XT. Hopefully the 10xx series doesn't loose support anytime in the near future. The 9xx series is quickly approaching it's 12-13yr support road map Nvidia usually has.

[Secarian]

Same with my RX6400 seems to me like it defaults to the internal GPU even if the only monitor that is connected is on the PCIe GPU. Try make a Scrips that detects what Devices are connected on boot and Set it by detecting on wich GPU a Screen is connected. But prettymuch every config with a APU or CPU with iGPU on wich you can't deactivate the iGPU or CPU Internal GPU will Fail cause the default seems to be hardcodet so the HDMI connected Screen is a Second screen if a iGPU is used even if the screen is connected to a GPU.

[edwin-jones]

I am having the same issue on ChimeraOS 41 - I ran the 2023-03-28 installer, rebooted and ended up with a black screen I could not get past. I had to flash a different OS so I couldn't get logs but I'm using a ryzen 5600 (non x) and a rx 6700 (non xt) gpu which should mean I have avoided any nvidia or integrated gpu related issues. I had no issues with Chimera OS 39 as I was running that before.

[FleischKarussel]

As mentioned on the COS website, Intel HD 500 and upwards is supported, I'm just using a Intel HD 4600 iGPU and also get a blackscreen. Also checking with the latest installer, atleast in my case it seems to be related to ValveSoftware/gamescope#508

[alkazar]

As mentioned on the COS website, Intel HD 500 and upwards is supported, I'm just using a Intel HD 4600 iGPU and also get a blackscreen. Also checking with the latest installer, atleast in my case it seems to be related to ValveSoftware/gamescope#508

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_processing_units)
Intel HD Graphics 4600 released in 2013
Intel HD Graphics 500 series released in 2015/2016

[FleischKarussel]

As mentioned on the COS website, Intel HD 500 and upwards is supported, I'm just using a Intel HD 4600 iGPU and also get a blackscreen. Also checking with the latest installer, atleast in my case it seems to be related to ValveSoftware/gamescope#508

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_processing_units) Intel HD Graphics 4600 released in 2013 Intel HD Graphics 500 series released in 2015/2016

Good hint, weird naming scheme! O_o

[edwin-jones]

I tried again with a reinstall - ctrl/alt/f3 gets me to a terminal and I can login, but the screen resets in a few seconds to a blinking cursor so I can't do much as every time I switch back to the terminal it will go back to the blinking cursor in a few seconds. Deleting .config/gamescope/modes.cfg didn't seem to work. I managed to get some logs though:

[S1ngl3-x]

I do have the same issue with "seatd" failed to open seat.
Seems like chimera is just uninstallable right now.

Edit : Using ryzen 5700x with rx 7900xt

[Not-Zero-Blank]

Sad to see no fixes or any guide to avoid this problem, i will try now downgrading

[ruineka]

Sad to see no fixes or any guide to avoid this problem, i will try now downgrading

Which version are you on?

[Not-Zero-Blank]

i was on 41 downgraded to 39 but it still doesnt work.
Any suggestions? The Hardware shoud be supported

[S1ngl3-x]

i was on 41 downgraded to 39 but it still doesnt work. Any suggestions? The Hardware shoud be supported

I have tried this ISO and it worked : chimeraos-2023.02.15-x86_64 .
I am however hesitant to recommend anything. It's worrisome to install something that is currently not even installable by default.

[Not-Zero-Blank]

Is it possible to see Logs or anything?

[ruineka]

Is it possible to see Logs or anything?

With the new version we are about to release if there are issues you'll be sent to the desktop instead of a black screen making it much easier to investigate and get logs for these situations.

[S1ngl3-x]

Is it possible to see Logs or anything?

With the new version we are about to release if there are issues you'll be sent to the desktop instead of a black screen making it much easier to investigate and get logs for these situations.

Can I ask if this will be the case only when strictly black screen is shown?
I am asking because Nobara redirects user to the Gnome interface every time there is an issue in the steamdeckUI and it is very annoying. I very much prefer the way it is handled Chimera where just the steamdeckUI is restarted.

[ruineka]

Is it possible to see Logs or anything?

With the new version we are about to release if there are issues you'll be sent to the desktop instead of a black screen making it much easier to investigate and get logs for these situations.

Can I ask if this will be the case only when strictly black screen is shown?
I am asking because Nobara redirects user to the Gnome interface every time there is an issue in the steamdeckUI and it is very annoying. I very much prefer the way it is handled Chimera where just the steamdeckUI is restarted.

This will only be when there are multiple gamescope crashes in a small amount of time that should only occur when something is very broken and needs fixed. It prevents the issue where you can't set up SSH or get to the TTY because the looping takes focus away.

I have never tested gamescope-session on Nobara so I'm not sure how that behaves or how it's set up.

[Limbo-man]

Try
logging in with gamer/gamer
chimera-session bigpicture
Alt+ctrl+F7

It makes us go a step further

[Aaron-Lloyd]

Having this problem as well. On the previous version somehow got the system to straighten itself out by running 'gamescope-session gamepadui' from the tty.

Updating the system seems to have broken things again and unfortunately I can't seem to get the system to consistently not get stuck booting into Gnome (running 'game mode' just pops me back to gnome again).

I'm on a i5-3570k and RX 5700XT.

[mwprado]

My computer had this issue too. To solve this problem I connected the monitor to igpu and let the OS choose the dgpu in games automatically. After a steam interface upgrade another desktop using fedora stoped to load steam because of the launcher was setted to start using dgpu (PRIME settings). I've corrected disabling the dgpu in launcher in the same way.

[Viking8]

I just heard of Chimera recently and wanted to give it a shot. I have a rather old PC by todays standards, but it works fine for gaming at lower settings. An AMD FX 8350 CPU and an AMD RX 580 8GB GPU are the two main parts. I installed Chimera and after it restarts, I get a blank screen. I get a login prompt when do ctrl, alt, F3 and I'm able to login with gamer/gamer. I issued the command chimera-session which gave me a list of all available sessions, so I chose desktop and that worked. I tested going into each chimera-session gamepadui option but each option resulted in a blank screen.
So based on the vastly different CPU/GPU combos of the people in this forum post all having the same thing happening, it doesn't appear it's my particular CPU/GPU combo, but perhaps it's another piece of installed hardware that is causing issues. I have a WiFi 6E card installed as well as a 4 port USB PCI card (Yup, you read that correctly, PCI).
I removed those cards but nothing has changed. If anyone has any ideas, I would be very appreciative for you to send them my way. Thx!

[HicirTech]

After upgraded a version of steam OS, it suddenly designed to boot into a black screen. That's what brings me to here.

First: Thanks for the info provided by @Viking8.

So that: this is what I tried:

1. Ctrl +Alt + F3 : That gives me Linux interface: login as gamer
2. chimera-session: That lists available session => I found steam and steam-plus in the output
3. I issued chimera-session steam-plus: That boot me into steam OS and from there things are working fine

Every time you restart your machine you will need to do this again.

---

Update 15/Mar/2024

My PC was running on an old HDD, and I upgraded it to a SSD.
Since I need to re-install OS, I designed to give Chimera another tries.
By installed the latest Chimera OS (release 45), looks like the black screen issue is fixed somehow. The only thing change here is the SSD, not sure if that is a factor.

[Mahler79]

Any updates on this issue? I have same problem here. @HicirTech ”solution” seems to work, but is annoying to do this every time… besides, if you want to switch to desktop mode, it freezes.

[kuolas]

After upgraded a version of steam OS, it suddenly designed to boot into a black screen. That's what brings me to here.

First: Thanks for the info provided by @Viking8.

So that: this is what I tried:

1. `Ctrl +Alt + F3` : That gives me Linux interface: login as `gamer`

2. `chimera-session`: That lists available session => I found `steam` and `steam-plus` in the output

3. I issued `chimera-session steam-plus`:  That boot me into steam OS and from there things are working fine

Every time you restart your machine you will need to do this again.

Update 15/Mar/2024

My PC was running on an old HDD, and I upgraded it to a SSD. Since I need to re-install OS, I designed to give Chimera another tries. By installed the latest Chimera OS (release 45), looks like the black screen issue is fixed somehow. The only thing change here is the SSD, not sure if that is a factor.

I can confirm that behavior. With SSD works. with HDD it does not.

I think is a race condition.

In my case I go to the console (Ctrl + Alt + F5), using the user and password gamer, and then list all process with ps -A

In the process list there are two gamescope-session. Killing the gamescope-session with the highest PID makes the system boot, if not the system hangs on a black screen.

[pastaq]

In the process list there are two gamescope-session. Killing the gamescope-session with the highest PID makes the system boot, if not the system hangs on a black screen.

Oh wow, this is good info. Thanks. At least we have somewhere to start now.

[kuolas]

It looks like there is a watchdog service that respawns gamescope-session if it does not start, but it confuses the startup time of a slow medium (like HDD) to a retry fail.

[alkazar]

@kuolas
Can you try the following:

1. Unlock the filesystem with: sudo frzr-unlock (password is "gamer")
2. Open /usr/lib/systemd/user/gamescope-session-plus@.service with vim or nano (again using sudo)
3. Under the [Service] section add the line:
   TimeoutStartSec=180s

The default is 90 seconds, you can try higher values if needed.

[kuolas]

@kuolas Can you try the following:

1. Unlock the filesystem with: `sudo frzr-unlock` (password is "gamer")

2. Open `/usr/lib/systemd/user/gamescope-session-plus@.service` with vim or nano (again using sudo)

3. Under the `[Service]` section add the line:
   `TimeoutStartSec=180s`

The default is 90 seconds, you can try higher values if needed.

I does not seems to work. I've tested several times, increased the value to 360s, with the same result.

[alkazar]

Thanks for testing. I guess the cause is elsewhere. 🤔

[mkuznetsov]

Same problem. AMD 7745hx iGPU 610M. Blank screen after installation.
Text prompt appear if Ctrl+Alt+F3 pressed. I switched different TTYs. same result.
dmesg don't provide any additional info so far.
I tried timeout in config. same result.
I tried to passthrough my iGPU and tried clean vm without passthrough. Same blank screen.
I tried to connect monitor to hdmi.
I tried to install it on external disk and boot my hardware from it without Proxmox. I see, that monitor change resolution one time, but screen was still black.

Any suggestion?

[kenichiA380]

After trying to figure out the problem by enabling verbose boot and peeking inside several service configs, i think i managed to fix it by adding sleep 5 to the 2nd line of the /usr/share/gamescope-session-plus/gamescope-session

/usr/share/gamescope-session-plus/gamescope-session

#!/bin/bash
sleep 5

declare -r CLIENT=$1
...

I guess its not because of two gamescope service got into race condition but some other service that needed to start before gamescope hasn't started yet or something. (looks like bluetooth? i'm not sure)

it's funny that in the last part of this file doing some tasks for exiting, there is a comment saying "start a background sleep for five seconds because we don't trust it",
but looks like five seconds of sleep just for exiting was still too much of trust lol