On 2023-05-19 23:32, Gary Dale wrote:
I'm running Debian/Bookworm on an ASUS FA506IC laptop. It's got an AMD
Ryzen processor but an NVidia graphics card that provides me with
great evidence for why I had previously avoided NVidia cards. I'm
running Bookworm because I couldn't get it work on Bullseye.
It'd been running OK with the proprietary drivers (but not the
Nouveau) until earlier today. I don't use it very often so it was
probably a few weeks since I last updated it. I had trouble the
previous time I'd updated it too, but that was the move to the
non-free-firmware section that messed it up. Once I added the new
section to the sources, things worked again.
The symptoms I'm getting are the same as what it used to display when
I tried to use sddm to start the desktop. Gdm3 and lightdm both worked
in the past but now I'm getting the same symptom with all of them - a
blank screen with a cursor flashing in the top-left corner. At that
point I can't even bring up a text console, but I can reboot
(ctrl-alt-del still works).
I can boot to a recovery mode and start the network, but not sure how
to track this down. Removing and reinstalling the NVidia driver didn't
help. Trying to start the desktop without the NVidia driver (and
firmware) installed also didn't work. I still get the system booting
to a blank screen with a flashing cursor in the top let corner.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
Further to above, I purged the nVidia drivers then noticed that there
was still some nVidia stuff left (e.g. nvidia-persistence) so I did a
further purge. When I rebooted, the system stalled initially after a
couple of ACPI errors (there were only those lines on the screen - it
was barely starting) but a ctrl-alt-del later and it got all the way to
starting the nouveau drivers before stalling.
I reinstalled the nVidia drivers and was back to the same problem.
Rebooting to recovery mode and checking the journal for the previous
boot, there were a string of errors relating to lightdm failing to
start, followed by retry and the same error.
I purged lightdm, rebooted and re-installed it but got the same errors.
I don't believe this is a problem with lightdm because it is also
happening with gdm3 and sddm. The only difference is that its been
happening with sddm since I got the laptop last November whereas the
problem with lightdm and gdm3 is much more recent.
I can run the system with the Nouveau drivers when booting from
systemrescuecd (a couple of recent versions, including 10.0), so this is
a Debian issue.
