Arch Linux

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Plasma login manager black screen

Since I started to use Plasma login manager most of the times I get black screen on initial startup. Before reaching the login manager I can see the Arch splashcreen on the monitor. If I switch to tty2 I can also see that, but most of the times the login manager's screen is not visible.
Workaround is to either switch between tty2 and tty1 a couple of times, or turn off the monitor once or twice. After these I can always see the screen.
I have NVIDIA GPU (RTX 2070 Super), based on the Wiki I tried to modify the DRM kernel mode setting, set early module loading, but so far nothing helped.

I'm posting systemd journal logs from my recent boot, where the issue happened: Termbin link
I turned my monitor off/on two times: 10:19:58, 10:20:57 and after the second time it worked.

One additional note is that as far as I can tell, I only see this issue after power on, after a 'systemctl reboot' I think I never saw this.

Last edited by Elkor1991 (Today 08:38:39)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

only nvidia vga, nvidia loads in the initramfs,

Oct 29 10:19:29 DESKTOP-ROBI plasmalogin[481]: Message received from greeter: Connect
Oct 29 10:19:29 DESKTOP-ROBI plasma-login-greeter[636]: Reading session (1) from "/usr/share/wayland-sessions/plasma.desktop"
Oct 29 10:19:29 DESKTOP-ROBI plasma-login-greeter[636]: QDBusConnection: name 'org.freedesktop.UPower' had owner '' but we thought it was ':1.26'
Oct 29 10:19:35 DESKTOP-ROBI plasma-login-greeter[636]: There are no outputs - creating placeholder screen
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oct 29 10:21:00 DESKTOP-ROBI plasmalogin[481]: Message received from greeter: Login
Oct 29 10:21:00 DESKTOP-ROBI plasma-login-greeter[636]: Message received from daemon: LoginSucceeded
Oct 29 10:21:00 DESKTOP-ROBI plasma-login-greeter[636]: There are no outputs - creating placeholder screen
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Oct 29 10:21:06 DESKTOP-ROBI plasmalogin[481]: Greeter stopping...

for OUT in /sys/class/drm/card*; do echo $OUT; edid-decode $OUT/edid; echo "================="; done

You'll need https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/v4l-utils/

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

edid-decode output

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

1440p@60Hz by default on displayport, supports VRR - doesn't seem prone to stumble the handshake.

Does it help if you copy and inject the EDID, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel … s_and_EDID ?
You can just

sudo cp /sys/class/drm/card0-DP-2/edid /usr/lib/firmware/

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

I copied the edid file.
If I understand correctly, I don't have to specify the edid_firmware in the kernel command line, right? It's enough to copy the file to /usr/lib/firmware.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

No, you do have to specify the edid_firmware to inject it (notably the filename is complete freeform and you might want to indicate the output to which to assign the edid as well)

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

Ok, sorry, I misunderstood that part then.
Now I copied the file to firmware/edid/edid.bin and also added it to cmdline and included the file in initramfs.

Can I somehow check if that edid file is used?
In journalctl I can see this, I'm not sure if that's enough:

Oct 30 10:46:36 archlinux kernel: Command line: drm.edid_firmware=edid/edid.bin nvidia-drm.modeset=1 nvidia-drm.fbdev=1 initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init root=UUID=5d2a9725-8024-4ecb-8ad1-0db92a7bc33f rw
Oct 30 10:46:36 archlinux kernel: Kernel command line: drm.edid_firmware=edid/edid.bin nvidia-drm.modeset=1 nvidia-drm.fbdev=1 initcall_blacklist=simpledrm_platform_driver_init root=UUID=5d2a9725-8024-4ecb-8ad1-0db92a7bc33f rw

By the way, the first couple of shutdown -> power on tests worked now.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

Can I somehow check if that edid file is used?

Should™ show up in the journal, yes.

By the way, the first couple of shutdown -> power on tests worked now.

\o/
In case this holds and in general please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

I only see the kernel command line logs in the journal, nothing else about edid. But hopefully it works.
Thanks for the help!

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

You can try to issue a bogus path - at least that should™ get you an error, but this usually works as expected

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

Unfortunately the issue triggered again: journal
I also tried to use false path for the edid to check if it really gets used and I think it works, because when false path is used I got this error:

Oct 31 09:29:59 archlinux kernel: nvidia 0000:01:00.0: Direct firmware load for false/path.bin failed with error -2
Oct 31 09:29:59 archlinux kernel: nvidia 0000:01:00.0: [drm] *ERROR* [CONNECTOR:828:DP-1] Requesting EDID firmware "false/path.bin" failed (err=-2)

1440p@60Hz by default on displayport, supports VRR - doesn't seem prone to stumble the handshake.

I don't know if this matters, but refresh rate is set to 360Hz

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

Does the output only shut down when starting plasma-login-manager or does it remain off during the entire boot?

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Elkor1991

Member

Registered: 2026-04-28

Posts: 8

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

Only when plasma-login-manager is starting. Prior to that I can see the boot and arch splash screen and the boot log screen as well.

I'm also uploading a successful boot process, where Plasma login manager's output show up the first time, without any problem (this happened right now after a power off/on sequence): journal

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,630

Re: Plasma login manager black screen

Does it help to artificially delay the start of plasma-loginmanager by eg 3 seconds?
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 2#p2305642

Otherwise try to force the DM/kwin to run at 60Hz and/or disable VRR

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc