I have a Qubes 4.1 install which works fine on a 1080p monitor but will not boot when attached to a 4K monitor. I have just booted it into the 1080p and then switched the cables and it was absolutely fine so there is an issue in the boot process somewhere.
The boot screen comes up fine and I can select an option between Qubes and Advnaced options for Qubes.
After this the screen firstly goes black, then flickers a single colour for a fraction of a second, then goes black again for some minutes. Eventually it brings up a CLI prompt at the top left for the encryption password for my drive. I am able to type this in and it is accepted however the the screen goes black with a single underscore at the top left. Some time later the 3 dots appear which would signify loading but very near the top left instead of in the middle of the screen and they are much smaller in size. The last one is highlighted slightly but this does not seem to change.
Some time later, maybe 10 minutes or more, the login prompt appears. This seems to operate as it should and has the toolbar across the top. However upon successfully logging in only the background is viewable. There is no toolbar but the mouse is able to move around. This is an effective dead end as without a toolbar nothing can be done.
Any suggestions on how to fix this would be appreciated.
Itâs a Dell XPS 8940. 11th gen i7-11700. 16GB DDR4 2933Hz. 512GB NVMe SSD + 1TB 7200RPM drive (Qubes is on the nvme and it boots from this). Iâm using the on board graphics for this and connecting with HDMI.
I do have an Nvidia card but I had even less success when booting with that in and created a separate post as the symptoms were different to this issue and common over the two monitors.
Shows your chipset, CPU, graphics controller and other PCI devices
xrandr -verbose with 1080p monitor plugged in
Shows the EDID and monitor announcement
xrandr -verbose with 4K monitor plugged in
Might show something thatâs causing your issue on boot
GRUB usually works on most GPUs (although, to be fair, I have had issues with an HP Omen board with an nVIDIA card, it stays blank until the Linux kernel loads nouveau, and then it works, and I still donât know whyâŚ)
So plymouth is also having trouble showing up. Thatâs useful information.
Maybe try to add the following kernelopt:
i915.alpha_support=1
It is used by the installer ISO to force the Intel graphics modules to âshow something no matter whatâ, more or lessâŚ.
Those should be hidden by plymouthd and shouldnât be showing up. It sounds like something is a little messed up with your Xen and Xorg configs.
Do they show up when you boot with your 1080p monitor plugged in�
Ok, so the greeter works as expectedâŚ
Yeah; thatâs definitely not supposed to be happening
Can you right-click and open a terminal?
Can you get to a tty?
ââ-
In any case, as @HPOA909 said, itâs always worth trying the latest kernel, but I have a feeling thereâs something else going on besides kernel modulesâŚ
Once I had a problem that sounds similar.
I was trying to boot Linux on a 4k Screen, which would not work.
I could not see the messages from EFI/BIOS firmware.
I could start Windows 10, which worked fine.
As the tower had a graphics card which allowed me to plug in two screens, I could see the smaller screen, it would boot. I could make adjustments in the BIOS/EFI if needed. And like this case, the 4K screen would begin working.
I hypothesized it is possible the SSD with Linux was so fast that the Firmware might not have been able to keep up. Windows boot was slow enough that was not a problem. I guess that is my prejudice against Windows speaking. As the tower is no longer online. I just now use the tower with Windows 10 to watch movies.
I think I am suggesting the problem you have is in the EFI/BIOS. Maybe slow down the boot in some way(???)
This problem occurs with me when I have the display at 4K/60Hz. It works fine 4K/30Hz. I donât think the BIOS/UFEI screen supports 60Hz. I wonder if the problem is the motherboardâs lack of compatibility with 60Hz refresh rate.
When I plug in after booted up it is only at 30Hz. I canât see an option on the monitor to slow down the refresh rate. I donât think this is the issue unless someone can point me towards some commands to test this.
I donât know if this is relevant to my issue but Iâve caught an error message at the grub stage. Perhaps since setting the advised kernelopt ( i915.alpha_support=1).
It flashes up very quickly on the 1080p monitor, I had to take a picture to capture it.
"Welcome to GRUB!
error: file `/EFI/qubes/fonts/unicode.pf2â not found."
