Jetson Nano blank screen during and after boot

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson Systems Jetson Nano
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106

I am experiencing the same issue as others. Got a Jetson Nano 2GB with a SDXC Sansdisc 64GB yesterday. Everything worked fine until I did a reboot for the updates. When rebooted, I see some log text on the screen briefly and then the screen goes blank. In the meantime I suppose I will reformat the SD card and just not update until this issue has been fixed.

EDIT
The solution that permafrost55 proposed worked like a charm. I didn’t even need to SSH into the Nano from a different computer by entering console mode using Ctrl+Alt+F1 instead.

107

I tested a bunch of trials with fresh images and here are the results. I also added a link to my Google Drive with all of the logs. If you’re having issues downloading the files let me know. I added “auth.log” from the “/var/log” folder, and “eipp.log”, “history.log”, “term.log” from the “var/log/apt” folder.

Before and after reboot logs were saved. Trials that rebooted with a blank screen were bypassed by logging in with sudo systemctl start gdm3.service and then the logs were saved.

Hopefully these trials will help the developers find a solution.

Also, @mdegans, I successfully built OpenCV 4.4 with your github (great work and thanks!) and noticed that sudo apt-get dist-upgrade is in the .sh file so added that trial here. I think that’s where my blank screen issue came from because I hadn’t run any of the other “upgrade” commands on my own.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-QMYxxqERIohLMOnJjZU7X3JgiMElzCa?usp=sharing

Trial 1 Fresh image
1-1 Initial start-up logs
1-2 sudo apt update
Before reboot logs.
Result: Successful reboot
1-3 sudo apt-get update
Before reboot logs.
Result: Successful reboot
1-4 sudo apt upgrade
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Failed reboot. Blank screen.

Trial 2 Fresh image
2-1 sudo apt-get upgrade
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Failed reboot. Blank screen.

Trial 3 Fresh image
3-1 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Failed reboot. Blank screen.

Trial 4 Fresh image
4-1 sudo apt upgrade
No upgrade actually took place. It said that no packages needed upgrading.
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Successful reboot
4-2 sudo apt upgrade - A second time.
Upgrade actually happened.
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Failed reboot. Blank screen.

Trial 5 Fresh image
5-1 Ubuntu only update prompted by pop-up window. Approx 231MB.
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Failed reboot. Blank screen.

Trial 6 Fresh image
6-1 Full software update by navigating to “Preferences > Software Updater”. Approx 414MB.
Before and after reboot logs.
Result: Failed reboot. Blank screen.

108

Let me recap this issue again for someone who just hits issue and visits this thread.

  1. NV has located the root cause of this issue and internally we already resolved this. But users here may need to wait for the next release.

  2. A workaround to avoid this issue is mentioned in comment #66
    Jetson Nano blank screen during and after boot - #66 by WayneWWW

Before doing the apt-get upgrade, you may need to hold systemd to let it not going to upgrade.

  1. This issue only happens to lightdm based platform. Thus, if you are using default jetpack release, only Nano-2gb will have this problem. Nano-4GB device is using gdm3 but not lightdm so will have no such issue.
    Thus, if you are using nano-4gb and you have a blanked screen, please file a new topic for it because this thread is different from your case.
109

How do you fix it if you dont want to do a fresh install ?

110

Could you try to

  1. Install lightdm-gtk-greeter through apt

sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

  1. Open up ‘/etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-nvidia.conf’ with any editor as root.

Add below line.

greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

Actually, this is the final solution we have here. Next release will contain this too.

111

Thank you. That fixed the issues with the blank desktop at boot.

One issue I see with this fix is that it killed bluetooth auto connecting at boot up

112

Is this the correct way to edit as root?

sudo -H gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-nvidia.conf

113

I did nano in a termial window
sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-nvidia.conf

115

Could you firstly share what you’ve tried from this post? There are at least 2 methods on this thread to workaround issue.

I don’t think we need to explain this issue again.

116

@WayneWWW It is dissapointing that there are only workarounds and not a solution. When Nvidia will issue a solution?. I am not very hsppy with having to use a workaround for something that should work out of the box.

117

Have you tried the method to change the greeter?
That is the actual solution for this issue.

118

Will try it

119

Do i need to do it before or after the update that leads to a blank boot screen is installed?

120

It just worked for me. I did it after the update that leads to the blank screen.

121

Here is a quick fix. The problem was on a fresh install you get asked if you would gdm3 or lightdm as your display manager. I selected lightdm because it seemed faster and more lightweight. After rebooting I got the blank screen. Clearly lightdm does not work with the nano. To fix it, restart your device, when you get to blank screen do:

cntrl + alt + f1 => gets you to terminal
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm3
reboot

My OS ran fine after that. No need to rewrite OS onto sd card etc.

122

The problem is due to the greeter as I mentioned. But not totally lightdm.

Changing to gdm3 was also a method mentioned by other users in previous comments.
However, nano-2gb user is not able to use gdm3 because only 2GB ram is available.

124

You might want to put a note in the getting started pages as a step to install lightdm and edit the conf file.

but also it called DEV for a reason :)

this thread helped alot.

125

Jetson nano-2gb by default is using lightdm. There is no need to write a step to install lightdm.