Black screen boot issues after update, and I'm baffled. Updated: I need help regarding firmware files that didn't unzstd

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I’m sorry to be a bother, I really am, but I don’t know what else to do here other than ask.

My partner’s art computer is running Manjaro so it’s important that I get this fixed, for our livelihood. I prefer to try to figure these things out on my own, but I’m genuinely, sincerely at a loss.

After the most recent update, Manjaro booted into a black screen. First of its like I’d seen. I couldn’t get it to boot after a number of attempts, so with my limited knowledge I headed into GRUB, hit E on Manjaro Linux, and deleted out only quiet. Then I hit Ctrl+X to boot.

At this point, I was able to get output from the boot process, but it always seems to hang around either setting up or finishing setup of the Virtual Console.

I’m at a loss, is there any way I could see further debug information to try to discern why it’s hanging like this?

Edited: From the dark recesses of my mind from when I used to run Linux, I remembered to try nomodeset.

I was able to TTY from there, did a journalctl to get some logs.

This resulted in seeing an error where firmware failed to load: amdgpu/polaris10_mc.bin

I’m investigating further, but this is a little above my paygrade.

Edited again: Alright! It looks like the update, for whatever reason, updated the amdgpu libs but did not decompress them. I went into /lib/firmware/amdgpu and did unzstd * and rebooted. Et voila, my partner’s computer boots again.

However, the worry I have is that it said that some of the zsts were symbolic links, so zst refused to decompress them. At this point, what I’d like is some advice on how to do that.

I think this thread might be able to help others who ended up baffled by this. Also, nomodeset is pretty much a recommendation for any boot hanging where one can’t TTY. I remember that from my old Linux days! So, that’s definitely something I want to get out there as I’m surprised it isn’t recommended more.

Anyway, yes. What do I do about the symlink’d zsts I couldn’t unzst?

Last edit, maybe?: I’m tempted to use unzst with zstcat, but my worry is that this won’t preserve the symlinks if they need to be preserved, or if they’re just linked in to be in the right location for decompressing.

This really is above my paygrade, so… I’m hoping someone can help, thanks!

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Hi, I have the same problem of booting to a black screen but even after adding nomodeset to the grub boot command I still don’t have access to any TTY so I don’t know what to do. (First time in 4 years that I feel the need to make an account here to post about a problem…)

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Yours may be this thing:

Without the actual errors its hard to guess. But virtually missing kernel/boot files could be it.

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Ok i actually now was able to get the tty, and like OP I found via the journal errors that the wifi firmware was considered as missing because all the files were compressed in /lib/firmware.
Now it still gives me a blackscreen after rebooting but the error message is different in journal:

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(Sorry in advance for the quality)

Seems like it was compressed for the intel firmware too but still after doing the same steps and rebooting, I still get a blackscreen.

I will update more after seeing more if I find anything.

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You’re right, looks more like the firmware thing.

(though I do not know for sure if they are not connected to the ‘mkinitcpio’/hook issues)

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No idea, I know only that it’s my own mistake because (as I have seen for a few others) I did not logout to upgrade as I thought it would be a “normal” big update :sweat:

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I had exact same issue as OP, I’ve now managed a complete fix (or at least, seems to be).

First I used nomodeset to get to TTY and then unzstd to uncompress my firmware, just like OP, but unlike OP, uncompromising my amdgpu firmwares didn’t allow me to boot without nomodeset.I also found after using nomodeset to boot that none of my network devices were working.

So when that didn’t work, I did

cd /lib/firmware
find . -name "*.zst" -type f -exec unzstd {} \;

Above will uncompress all non-symlinks in /lib/firmware/

That got my network devices working after a reboot and then I used mhwd-kernel to install kernel 6.6 (I was on 5.15) as I’ve read from other posts also having issues after this upgrade, that there are issues with 5.x kernels. One more reboot later and I have full graphics and no other remaining issues that I’m aware of.

I also did fix one of the symlinked firmware files after seeing in journalctl that it was an issue. I’m not sure yet if that was important or not though. Specifically:

  • I saw in journalctl that there was an issue loading amdgpu/navy_flounder_ta.bin
  • I noted that there was an existing symlink amdgpu/navy_flounder_ta.bin.zst → amdgpu/beige_goby_ta.bin.zst
  • I created a new symlink amdgpu/navy_flounder_ta.bin → amdgpu/beige_goby_ta.bin.
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Just did all of these steps, I even updated the linux-firmware with pamac and yet i’m still stuck.

What is the weirdest is that when removing quiet in the bootload, I can see that it stops after correctly Reaching the graphical interface as well as starting the color profiles:

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