Blank virtual consoles (maybe wrong video signal params)

jam666 · February 1, 2020, 4:57am

This is a very annoyng problem lasting for so much time, that I even cannot remember when it occured first.
When trying to switch to any virtual console (VC) by Ctrl-Alt-Fn - the screen goes blank and contains just my monitor’s energy-saving message.
Trying to go back to X with Ctrl-Alt-F7 resumes the signal (didn’t resume when uvesafb was used).
Today I decided to test various setting like changing the FB driver to simple-fb-driver, removing all the corresponding setting from the kernel line and elsewhere, adding params for nvidia-kms to have modeset=1, etc, etc.
All in vain.

uname -a
zgrep FB /boot/config-4.9.0-gentoo
cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/nvidia.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf

Please suggest what direction I should head for now. Any ideas welcome.
If there is a need please do not hesitate to request extra info.
Thank you in advance…

pyopyopyo · February 29, 2020, 1:14am

If you use UEFI system, you need the following configration;

CONFIG_FB_EFI=y in kernel config
video=efifb nvidia-drm.modeset=1 in kernel command line

jam666 · May 6, 2020, 5:21pm

Thank you for the hint.

As a matter of fact my system boot is BIOS-based, not UEFI. So using efifb will not help.

Is there still a way to have usable TTYs along witn nvidia module? Switching over to nouveau is not welcome.

PS If that may be useful - I had long time used nvidia with uvesafb and that worked like this:

Booting system with video=uvesafb I had working TTYs until the nvidia module load.
When nvidia loaded - my TTYs became blank and unusable (though still could be operated “in blind” - e.g. I could restart X from command line there). I could return to X by using Ctrl-Alt-F7 and continue work.
Since some recent update of nvidia-drivers the system’s behaviour changed - now it is impossible to return to X from blank TTY. So obviously I cannot use uvesafb anymore and there is a need to setup system differently.

I checked my kernel params, and adjusted xorg.conf using some info I managed to google. now it seems I have a properly working driver (dmesg and Xorg.0.log do not contain errors). But nevertheless truing to switch to TTY a got a blank screen with my monitor starting energy-saving mode.

Please advice - is there a way for current versions of nvidia driver to have it properly setting video mode in TTYs while the system is BIOS (not UEFI)?