Panel backlight goes dark when unplugging HDMI monitors

Graphics / Linux Linux
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On my laptop with a RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU the panel backlight turns off when I unplug an external monitor connected through HDMI. After removal of the cable, the screen turns black, then the backlight turns on again for a short period before remaining turned off. The panel still works though because it is barely possible to see its contents when looking closely. Also there is no issue with the HDMI monitor itself. The issue does not happen when unplugging a monitor connected through an USB-C port.

To restore the backlight, it sometimes works to press Ctl+Alt+F3 and Ctl+Alt+F1 after reconnecting the HDMI monitor. Sometimes it also works to wait for a while and closing and opening the lid.

I did my best debugging the open driver modules, but wasn’t able to come up with a solution. I suspect it’s a problem with the GSP firmware due the logs, but I might be wrong. I hope the logs with additional debug information help narrowing down the problem.

Hardware:

  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Laptop GPU (UUID: GPU-b7796aac-04a2-2dc8-6805-247f4753c91e)
  • Driver Version: 580.82.09
  • Kernel: Linux tuxedo 6.16.8-061608-generic #202509191558 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Sep 19 18:18:54 UTC 2025 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

dmesg.log (114.3 KB)

Maybe this is also related to the GPU falling of the bus during wakeup after suspend with NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 79, GPU has fallen off the bus., which is another problem with this device.

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help debug this problem.

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To add some more context: The problem also appears using an Intel CPU with an identical dmesg output. Is generally only occurs in dGPU mode, never in MSHybrid. On Windows, this issue doesn’t happen. This makes it very likely to be caused by the nvidia-open Linux driver. The issue appears under X11 and Wayland.

An early error that I would consider relevant is about GspRmControl failing:

[ 8.242877] NVRM: rpcRmApiControl_GSP: GspRmControl failed: hClient=0xc1d00001; hObject=0x0001000d; cmd=0x00731341; paramsSize=0x00000030; paramsStatus=0x00000055; status=0x00000055

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Apparently, the newly released 580.95.05 and 570.195.03 drivers both fix this problem.

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