Black screen with "/dev/sda1 clean" message

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1

Got the dreaded /dev/sda1 clean message with no more screen output (black with only that text) and nothing on the secondary display port (VGA) on an AMD Radeon 540. This is on the Manjaro manjaro-kde-21.0.7-210614-linux510.iso build following a reboot after a system update on a fresh install. This appeared to be on a 5.10 kernel. I was able to ssh into the system, but it wouldn’t even reboot after I issued a sudo reboot. I had to hold the power in to kill it.

Postfixing amdgpu.dc=0 to the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub (as per this) did not help.

After I installed the 5.4 LTS kernel (mhwd-kernel -i linux54 ) the system seemed to become textually responsive, but KDE and its KDM wouldn’t start up. startx resulted in errors. It didn’t seem that anything I did could get GUI to come back up and I had to basically boot with 3 postfixed to the GRUB command line to get into non-graphical mode.

After this insanity I did a reinstall with manjaro-kde-21.0.7-minimal-210614-linux54.iso which has the 5.4 LTS kernel by default and it seems to be functional even between updates and reboots.

After all of this I started noticing some odd behavior. The screen turned black at one point and I had to wait a few minutes and flip between the inputs of my monitor to which this and a couple other systems are attached. It finally came back and sshd remained active.

At one other point with a seemingly “stable” system the system hung again graphically. The time remained fixed over night for about 12 hours, but sshd was still active and so the kernel clearly did not hang, but the GPU driver apparently did.

Any thoughts on A) what’s going on with the 5.10 kernel series with this issue and B) anything I can do to track down the bug that could be causing the GPU/driver/module hang or is this a known issue?

I’m pretty leery right now since this is the second time within a year that I’ve been bitten hard by the “black screen” (device clean) symptom.

I do think Manjaro should consider making it easier to get a verbose boot + non-graphical access/control via GRUB. Perhaps an entry that makes debugging simpler vs having to modify the boot commands? Would make sense to have that living there beside Memtest86+…

3

Please read this:

Just press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to go to TTY2

Change quiet to text in GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub

  1. Please read this:
    How to provide good information
    and post some more information so we can see what’s really going on. Now we know the symptom of the disease, but we need some more probing to know where the origin lies… :grin:
  2. An inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width would be the minimum required information for us to be able to help you. (Personally Identifiable Information like serial numbers and MAC addresses will be filtered out by the above command)
    Also, please copy-paste that output in-between 3 backticks ``` at the beginning and end of the code/text.

:+1:

4

Thanks:

$ inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width -G --display

System:
  Kernel: 5.4.124-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4-x86_64
  root=UUID=f061988b-7ead-4d24-a0ac-a4283d81193d rw
  resume=UUID=e0d3b844-9521-45e9-aaca-10452613a05b udev.log_priority=3
  amdgpu.dc=0
  Desktop: N/A dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Dell product: Vostro 200 v: N/A serial: <filter>
  Chassis: type: 3 serial: <filter>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0CU409 v: ��� serial: <filter> BIOS: Dell v: 1.0.16
  date: 09/20/2008
Battery:
  Message: No system battery data found. Is one present?
Memory:
  RAM: total: 7.78 GiB used: 2.37 GiB (30.5%)
  RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required.
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo E7200 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Penryn
  family: 6 model-id: 17 (23) stepping: 6 microcode: 60F cache: L2: 3 MiB
  bogomips: 10113
  Speed: 1596 MHz min/max: 1600/2534 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1596 2: 1596
  Flags: acpi aperfmperf apic arch_perfmon bts clflush cmov constant_tsc cpuid
  cx16 cx8 de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts est fpu fxsr ht lahf_lm lm mca mce mmx
  monitor msr mtrr nopl nx pae pat pbe pdcm pebs pge pni pse pse36 pti
  rep_good sep sse sse2 sse4_1 ssse3 syscall tm tm2 tsc vme xtpr
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Vulnerable
  Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion
  Type: mds
  status: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode; SMT disabled
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI
  Type: spec_store_bypass status: Vulnerable
  Type: spectre_v1
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2
  mitigation: Full generic retpoline, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Lexa PRO [Radeon 540/540X/550/550X / RX 540X/550/550X]
  driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:699f class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 compositor: kwin_x11 driver:
  loaded: amdgpu,ati unloaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa
  display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1200 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x317mm (20.0x12.5")
  s-diag: 599mm (23.6")
  Monitor-1: DVI-D-0 res: 1920x1200 hz: 60 dpi: 94
  size: 519x324mm (20.4x12.8") diag: 612mm (24.1")
  OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX550/550 Series (POLARIS12 DRM 3.35.0
  5.4.124-1-MANJARO LLVM 12.0.0)
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.1.2 direct render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 82801I HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
  bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:293e class-ID: 0403
  Device-2: AMD Baffin HDMI/DP Audio [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X]
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:aae0
  class-ID: 0403
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.4.124-1-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 0.125.0 running: no
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.30 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel 82562V-2 10/100 Network vendor: Dell driver: e1000e
  v: 3.2.6-k port: ff00 bus-ID: 00:19.0 chip-ID: 8086:10c0 class-ID: 0200
  IF: enp0s25 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  IP v4: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: global broadcast: <filter>
  IP v6: <filter> scope: link
  WAN IP: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Message: No bluetooth data found.
Logical:
  Permissions: Unable to run lvs. Root privileges required.
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci v: 3.0 port: f400
  bus-ID: 00:1f.2 chip-ID: 8086.2822 rev: 02 class-ID: 0104
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 223.57 GiB used: 95.86 GiB (42.9%)
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required.
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: PNY model: CS1311 240GB SSD
  size: 223.57 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s
  rotation: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1122 scheme: MBR
  Optical-1: /dev/sr0 vendor: TSSTcorp model: CDRWDVD TS-H493B rev: D200
  dev-links: cdrom
  Features: speed: 48 multisession: yes audio: yes dvd: yes rw: cd-r,cd-rw
  state: running
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 214.77 GiB size: 210.34 GiB (97.94%)
  used: 92.03 GiB (43.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 label: N/A
  uuid: f061988b-7ead-4d24-a0ac-a4283d81193d
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default)
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8.8 GiB used: 3.83 GiB (43.6%)
  priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 label: N/A
  uuid: e0d3b844-9521-45e9-aaca-10452613a05b
Unmounted:
  Message: No unmounted partitions found.
USB:
  Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 6 rev: 2.0
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 6 rev: 2.0
  speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-3: 3-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-4: 4-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-5: 5-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Device-1: 5-1:2 info: Logitech Keyboard K120 type: Keyboard,HID
  driver: hid-generic,usbhid interfaces: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 1.5 Mb/s
  power: 90mA chip-ID: 046d:c31c class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: 5-2:3 info: Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse type: Mouse
  driver: hid-generic,usbhid interfaces: 1 rev: 2.0 speed: 1.5 Mb/s
  power: 100mA chip-ID: 046d:c016 class-ID: 0301
  Hub-6: 6-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-7: 7-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
  Hub-8: 8-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 2 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s
  chip-ID: 1d6b:0001 class-ID: 0900
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 60.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 177 Uptime: 3d 19h 55m wakeups: 0 Init: systemd v: 248
  tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 11.1.0 clang: 12.0.0 Packages: pacman: 1137
  lib: 319 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.8 running-in: tty pts/3 (SSH) inxi: 3.3.04

And thanks for the tips re: REISUB, sadly this did not help in this situation at the time. I surely wish ctrl-alt-f* worked as well. I will keep it in mind thought for a future situation… that hopefully doesn’t strike.

5
  • Please read the REISUB tutorial again and follow instructions from the top to the bottom as you need to activate REISUB first.
  • Apparently you’re not the only one with 5.10 issues on a Radeon 540/540X/550/550X. Next stable update, try the 5.10 kernel again, but stay on 5.4 for the moment.

:sob:

6

Thanks, I had assumed that this was a known issue, but seemingly hard to find a core discussion about it to understand when/if it’s fixed.

I guess the big thing that SCARES THE CRAP OUTTA ME is that if I shift gears to a stable 5.10 kernel that supposedly fixes it, but doesn’t, then I’m going to perhaps end up with that issue where X doesn’t start again even after moving back to 5.4… It took a reinstall for that to resolve so yeah… very fearful to have that hit me without a strategy in place beforehand.

7

I think I already know the answer from your inxi output but just to confirm, what’s the output of the command below?:

sudo mhwd -li

From the output quoted above, I would try a few things:

  1. Switching to video-modesetting and removing amdgpu.dc=0 from the grub command line. (Don’t forget to update your grub configuration after doing this).

  2. Mesa 21.1.4 is available on the testing branch. If the above does not help, see if updating to that package (and its dependencies) makes any difference.

  3. Try booting up with kernel 5.10 after doing either 1 or 2

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