HAOS won't boot without display connected

[cvroque]

Describe the issue you are experiencing

This one is a bit odd. I'm using the MSI Cubi as my HA server. It used to run Windows for a few years, then I went with a supervised installation and a few weeks ago I migrated over to HAOS.

Now I'm having one issue where it won't recover from a power loss or SO update, when I connect a display to check and reboot it starts up normally. After some testing I noticed it can't boot HAOS without a display connected, I tried with my Debian Supervised installation and it manages to boot normally without any display connected.

I checked and made sure I'm on the latest BIOS and the problem persists. I'm aware that this might be related to my particular hardware since I found similar issues ¹ ² online, but it works normally under Debian, Ubuntu and Windows.

I don't know much about Linux so I opened this issue in order to get help, it's important for my HA server to recover by itself after a power loss. Thanks in advance

What operating system image do you use?

generic-x86-64 (Generic UEFI capable x86-64 systems)

What version of Home Assistant Operating System is installed?

8.5

Did you upgrade the Operating System.

Yes

Steps to reproduce the issue

1. Disconnect any attached displays
2. Perform a Host Shutdown
3. Try to turn Hust on
4. Nothing happens
   ...

Anything in the Supervisor logs that might be useful for us?

Attached.

Anything in the Host logs that might be useful for us?

Attached.

System Health information

System Information

version	core-2022.8.7
installation_type	Home Assistant OS
dev	false
hassio	true
docker	true
user	root
virtualenv	false
python_version	3.10.5
os_name	Linux
os_version	5.15.60
arch	x86_64
timezone	America/Sao_Paulo
config_dir	/config

Home Assistant Community Store

GitHub API	ok
GitHub Content	ok
GitHub Web	ok
GitHub API Calls Remaining	4782
Installed Version	1.26.2
Stage	running
Available Repositories	1101
Downloaded Repositories	33

Home Assistant Cloud

logged_in	true
subscription_expiration	3 May 2023 at 21:00
relayer_connected	true
remote_enabled	true
remote_connected	true
alexa_enabled	false
google_enabled	true
remote_server	us-east-1-1.ui.nabu.casa
can_reach_cert_server	ok
can_reach_cloud_auth	ok
can_reach_cloud	ok

Home Assistant Supervisor

host_os	Home Assistant OS 8.5
update_channel	stable
supervisor_version	supervisor-2022.08.3
agent_version	1.2.1
docker_version	20.10.14
disk_total	116.7 GB
disk_used	51.9 GB
healthy	true
supported	true
board	generic-x86-64
supervisor_api	ok
version_api	ok
installed_addons	AdGuard Home (4.7.3), File editor (5.3.3), Frigate NVR (3.1), Home Assistant Google Drive Backup (0.108.4), Mosquitto broker (6.1.2), Samba share (10.0.0)

Dashboards

dashboards	3
resources	15
views	18
mode	storage

Recorder

oldest_recorder_run	13 July 2022 at 21:23
current_recorder_run	26 August 2022 at 16:27
estimated_db_size	1350.53 MiB
database_engine	sqlite
database_version	3.38.5

Sonoff

version	3.1.0 (3871c0b)
cloud_online	2 / 2
local_online	2 / 2

Xiaomi Gateway 3

version	2.1.1 (b23a66a)

Additional information

I'm unsure of the usefulness of these logs since I'm only able to collect these after a successful boot.

Host logs
Supervisor logs

[agners]

Hm, this is kinda annoying to debug.

It would be interesting to know if the logs have any hint. Can you start without display, wait for a few minutes, turn off the system, then start with display to access the logs using:

journalctl -b -1

The journalctl command is only available on the local console or through host OS SSH access (see https://developers.home-assistant.io/docs/operating-system/debugging#ssh-access-to-the-host).

[cvroque]

Yeah, this one might be annoying.

I followed your instructions on local console but the arg -1 ended up being my last boot up from 4 days ago and 0 was the boot with display connected, it didn't even get to register the "boot" without display.

[cvroque]

This weekend while I was in another city my house had a short power outage and my system went down and failed to recover.

After I came back I tried this:
journalctl --list-boots

But it only showed the boots from my previous test 5 days ago and the one tonight after I connected the display. After that I messed with pretty much every setting in the BIOS without any luck, so I decided to purchase an HDMI dummy.

Should we still try something else in order to fix this for other users or it's recommended to close the issue? Thanks again!

[agners]

It seems that Mint Linux distribution had the same problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/MiniPCs/comments/paq9ky/do_you_have_an_msi_cubi_will_it_boot_headless/

Maybe it can be resolved with a particular kernel configuration, but its essentially impossible to track this down without having access to that device. If that work around works for you, I'd say we close it.

Btw, it might be that a future OS version (especially with a major kernel upgrade, scheduled with HAOS 10) fixes this. So maybe worth retrying then...

[Martes-Wigglesworth]

Greetings everyone.

I have just encountered this issue and want to push a PR for this issue which should resolve this with a grub default operand update.

@agners Can this bug be re-openned so I may utilize this item number for my feature branch, or is there another similar issue which I may reference?

[Martes-Wigglesworth]

Upon further investigation, it appears that my case may be caused by an older bios which seems to require a vga input to be physically attached to fully post. I will update my PR comments and see what @agners would like to do with my submitted PR.

[github-actions]

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. To keep our backlog manageable we have to clean old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates.
Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant OS version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍
This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[JaCh0o]

Hello,
Got current version on my rpi5 and same issue, whenever display not connected I stucks without boot, when I connect HDMI monitor it boots properly. Any resolve?

[jqfernandez]

Hello, Got current version on my rpi5 and same issue, whenever display not connected I stucks without boot, when I connect HDMI monitor it boots properly. Any resolve?

For me, this problem happens when HAOS is only using wlan0 wifi interface and no monitor. If I use end0 with an ethernet cable and no monitor it boots fine. This is not a solution but its a workaround I can live with.

[JaCh0o]

To be honest that doesn't work in my case. Its always connected thru Ethernet and still it just don't boot if I won't connect monitor? Can anyone help with that bug?