Re: No console anymore. How to figure this out.

Hello, Dale.

On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 08:21:07 -0500, Dale wrote:
> On 3/15/26 7:11 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Sorry, I used the wrong word.  I really meant firmware.  This is in the
> > kernel configuration under Device Drivers/Generic Driver Options/Firmware
> > Loader in make menuconfig.  There, I have a (long) list of firmware files
> > for the built in AMD graphics I use on my machine.  You surely have a
> > similar list there, but for an nVidia graphics card.

> > I don't think one can use the kernel module mechanism for these files.
> > Are you using a recently build kernel (e.g. 6.18.12)?  If so, have any of
> > these firmware files been updated recently?  They are probably in package
> > sys-kernel/linux-firmware.

> No problem.  I'm on the same kernel I've used for a long time.  I need 
> to upgrade but just haven't.  Anyway, I'm on gentoo-sources-6.12.31 
> right now.

> This is what I have for that menu you mentioned.



> -*- Firmware loading facility
>    ()    Build named firmware blobs into the kernel binary
>    [ ]   Enable the firmware sysfs fallback mechanism
>    [ ]   Enable compressed firmware support
>    [*]   Enable firmware caching during suspend
>   [ ]   Enable users to initiate firmware updates using sysfs

So, given that empty (), it would seem it's the nVidia driver which is
loading the firmware into your system, as well as all the other things it
does.

> I edited that a bit to try to avoid line wrap.  I don't recall ever 
> changing those so that is likely the default setting.  I do have this in 
> /boot that is loaded when I boot.



> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 306176 Feb 5 04:13 amd-uc.img



> I think that is some sort of microcode.  I had forgot about that. I'm 
> not sure what even installed it.  So, let me look.

As Guilherme said, that is microcode for the AMD processor, so not
relevant.

[ .... ]

> >> I use Nvidia drivers.  I tried the other one but it was a disaster.
> >> Even on this fast rig, the mouse couldn't move smoothly.  It would jump
> >> and jerk to places.  Windows were slow too.  Is that where the
> >> microcode comes from or something else?
> > See above.

> >> I think the nvidia drivers updated a while back so that is a good
> >> idea.  I wouldn't have thought about that.  If it was the GUI, then I
> >> would.
> > Might it be possible that nVidia simply removed the console driver from
> > the code?

> I can't go back to a previous version of nvidia since it is out of the 
> tree now.  I did keyword a newer version to see if it had been fixed 
> tho.  Still the same.  No console.

That's strange.  In my gentoo repository, I have these ebuilds for
nvidia-drivers:

MAC ~ # ls -lrt /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-*.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16826 Nov 22 08:41 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-470.256.02-r2.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15261 Nov 22 08:41 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-390.157.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20856 Feb  3 13:17 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-570.211.01.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20413 Feb  3 13:17 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-535.288.01.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21260 Feb 18 05:40 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-590.48.01-r1.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20954 Feb 18 05:40 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-580.94.18.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 21419 Feb 28 08:16 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-580.126.18.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20923 Mar 11 01:08 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-580.142.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20326 Mar 12 01:38 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-595.45.04.ebuild
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20283 Mar 14 00:08 /var/db/repos/gentoo/x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers/nvidia-drivers-595.44.03.ebuild

Have you said yet which version of nvidia-drivers you are using at the
moment?  It looks like some of them have been updated very recently
indeed, in the last three or four days.  Presumably you can only use one
of the version numbers (first three digits), say 590.*.*.
590.48.01-r1.ebuild is from February 18.  That would match your "about
two weeks" of not working.

> When I rebooted, the usual text was scrolling up until the display 
> manager started.  That worked normally.  I also did something else. When 
> I upgraded the nvidia drivers, I tried again to go to a console.  Blank 
> screen.  I typed in root and then my password as if I was logging in.  I 
> then typed in reboot.  A few seconds later the computer beeped the usual 
> booting beep and up comes the BIOS screen.  So, agetty is running and it 
> is working, this seems to be purely a display problem.  This may be yet 
> another clue.  I dunno.

Yes, that is bound to be useful to know.  It would seem that the boot
messages are using some initial framebuffer, possibly taken over from
grub, and nvidia-drivers is trying to initialise its own framebuffer, but
failing and leaving the framebuffer in an unusable state.

I did a quick web search for this problem, with search string "Linux
nvidia driver no console" and two of the more useful results were:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8864997.html?sid=8f5f82f5b20d94e7ff69519d9e5ae1af
"No console output on boot with nvidia-drivers"
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8864997.html?sid=8f5f82f5b20d94e7ff69519d9e5ae1af
"New nvidia GPU, no console anymore", though the OP is using nouveau,
here.

I think these mentioned needing to disable some of the kernel flags like
CONFIG_DRM_... and CONFIG_FB_...  Might it be you've got a CONFIG_...
option wrongly set, and that didn't matter for the previous version of
the driver, but does now?

> >> Oh, would I need to reboot for the code to take effect once I go back a
> >> version of something?
> > I think that's likely.  :-(

> >> Dale
> >> :-)  :-)


> Do you think it would help to regenerate the grub info for the kernel 
> and init images and reinstall grub on the boot up thingy? Could 
> something have maybe changed and something is not being seen/loaded now, 
> that amd thingy in /boot for example???

It would not be the first thing I would try.  But maybe there is a kernel
parameter which is missing/superfluous, that worked before but doesn't
work now.

> I'm grasping at straws here.  Trying to share info that may be a clue to 
> think on.  I'm kinda clueless.  Given I can blindly login, I know 
> everything but the display is working.  I also know it works when 
> booting up as well as all the kernel loading a services are displayed.  
> Once it switches to GUI tho, no more console.

> This info help any?  It give you a clue as to where we can look? I'm 
> going to do like I usually do after a grub update and regenerate that.  
> See if that helps any.  Dang it takes me a while to get back up and 
> running tho.  Several of my drive sets are encrypted.  The little 
> scripts I wrote, with some help from this list, do help speed that up.  ;-)

> Thanks for the help.  I'm open to ideas.

There might be relevant tips on the Gentoo wiki in

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/NVIDIA/nvidia-drivers

, but that's quite a long detailed page.

> Dale

> :-)  :-)

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).