Flicker between GRUB2 and plymouth -- intel_agp required? where available?

[pantux]

Hi!
I'm a bit embarrassed but I'm stuck, not able to get rid of a screen flickering during boot, between the screens of GRUB2 and plymouth. Both GRUB2 and plymouth are OK.
It has this sequence:
... GRUB menu > black screen > text ("Booting openSUSE Tumbleweed Slowroll ... loading initial ramdisk ...") > text (fresh screen) > black screen > text > black screen > text > plymouth screen ...

The GPU is an integrated Intel, the OS is openSUSE Slowroll, the DE is KDE.

For early kernel mode setting I have tried/ascertained so far:

i915 is present in initramfs

# lsinitrd | egrep -i 'i915'
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Nov  4 13:15 usr/lib/firmware/i915
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        11736 Oct 21 09:36 usr/lib/firmware/i915/adlp_dmc.bin.xz
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        10896 Oct 21 09:36 usr/lib/firmware/i915/adlp_dmc_ver2_16.bin.xz
...

necessary commands are in /etc/default/grub

GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE="menu"
GRUB_TIMEOUT="3"

# tried with and without 'i915.support=1'
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet mitigations=auto security=apparmor"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

GRUB_TERMINAL="gfxterm"
GRUB_GFXMODE="auto"
# GRUB_GFXMODE="1366x768"

GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub2/themes/tuxtaz/theme.txt"
GRUB_CMDLINE_XEN_DEFAULT="vga=gfx-1024x768x16"

Some web pages mentioned a possible need to add intel_agp to initramfs, but it's neither installed nor available from openSUSE or its associated software sources.

find / -xdev -iname '*agp*' | egrep -v '.*/(emacs|texmf|licenses|doc|lib)/*'
/usr/share/man/man3/glEdgeFlagPointer.3gl.gz
/usr/include/X11/extensions/agproto.h
/usr/include/linux/agpgart.h

Am I following a wrong lead with intel_agp?
Is there something else that can eliminate the flicker of text and blacking out between GRUB2 and plymouth? Ideally, the background of the GRUB2 menu would stay until login.

Thanks for ideas -- or some tasty google bait!




Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed-Slowroll 20241103
KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.7.0
Qt Version: 6.8.0
Kernel Version: 6.11.6-2-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Pentium® CPU 4417U @ 2.30GHz
Memory: 15,5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 610
Manufacturer: HP
Product Name: HP 250 G7 Notebook PC
System Version: Type1ProductConfigId

 

[GatorsFan]

you could try adding the i915.fastboot=1 kernel parameter to avoid the flickering caused by unnecessary mode-setting operations.
Add i915.fastboot=1 after quiet splash so it will look like

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet i915.fastboot=1 mitigations=auto security=apparmor"

 

[pantux]

Thank you for the quick reply!

Adding i915.fastboot=1 wasn't enough, apparently. So I dug deeper.

The GPU is compatible, in X11, i915 is active:

# lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 610 (rev 07)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 84a6
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915

i915 is copied into initramfs:

# lsinitrd | grep i915
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root           24 Nov  4 13:15 etc/modprobe.d/60-i915.conf
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root            0 Nov  4 13:15 usr/lib/firmware/i915
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        11736 Nov  4 13:15 usr/lib/firmware/i915/adlp_dmc.bin.xz
...

dmesg has a line I find suspicious, but have no idea where it came from.
[ 3.609328] [ T400] i915: unknown parameter 'fastboot' ignored

All i915 in dmesg:

# dmesg  | grep i91
[    0.000000] [      T0] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.11.6-2-default root=UUID=1cc49798-2a12-4120-a3ee-835b3ec6fb3f splash quiet i915.fastboot=1 mitigations=auto security=apparmor
[    0.031126] [      T0] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.11.6-2-default root=UUID=1cc49798-2a12-4120-a3ee-835b3ec6fb3f splash quiet i915.fastboot=1 mitigations=auto security=apparmor
[    3.609328] [    T400] i915: unknown parameter 'fastboot' ignored
[    3.610048] [    T400] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Found KABYLAKE/ULT (device ID 5906) display version 9.00
[    3.646850] [    T400] i915 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: deactivate vga console
[    3.653949] [    T400] i915 0000:00:02.0: vgaarb: VGA decodes changed: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=io+mem
[    3.655848] [     T58] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] Finished loading DMC firmware i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin (v1.4)
[    5.294228] [    T400] [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 for 0000:00:02.0 on minor 1
[    5.836402] [    T400] fbcon: i915drmfb (fb0) is primary device
[    6.367205] [    T400] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] fb0: i915drmfb frame buffer device
[   13.183036] [    T744] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1f.3: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_audio_component_bind_ops [i915])
[   13.239660] [    T753] mei_hdcp 0000:00:16.0-b638ab7e-94e2-4ea2-a552-d1c54b627f04: bound 0000:00:02.0 (ops i915_hdcp_ops [i915])

What to check next?

 

[GatorsFan]

i915: unknown parameter 'fastboot' ignored

Does not look like it worked any way - so you should undo i915.fastboot=1 - that is where it came from maybe the kernel no longer excepts that parameter

 

[osprey]

@pantux wrote:

not able to get rid of a screen flickering during boot

In relation to screen flickering with intel, perhaps check out here:

Graphic bugs after upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to Ubuntu 22.10

I am using Lenovo ThinkPad gen 10 with GPU: Intel Alder Lake-P with a resolution: 3840x2400. With Ubuntu 22.04, everything was working fine but when I upgraded to 22.10 I had many Graphical glitches

askubuntu.com

The comment about Panel Self Refresh (PSR), power saving feature, may be relevant. In particular testing the usefulness of the kernel option: i915.enable_psr=0, may be worth considering.

Other kernel options that may be of use in this situation are
i915.enable_dc=0
intel_idle.max_cstate=2
Trying one at a time would be the wisest approach to see if they help.

 

[pantux]

@GatorsFan Yes, without this kernel command the suspicious dmesg line is gone.

@osprey I'v tried the commands, individually and in all possible combination, but no luck.

Thinking in the power management direction, I turned off TLP (although it kicks in at a later stage, I believe) but that made no change.

Some dude was lucky with a change in /usr/lib/systemd/system/plymouth-start.service, removing systemd-vconsole-setup.service from Wants=. Did nothing here.

Guess the standard errors have been exhausted. It seem more likely now that someting is rotten in my setup; some nonstandard installation or so. Extensive log reading ahead...

Thank you for your readiness to offer competent help and point me in directions I had not thought of.


P.S.:
All that ado is for an uninterrupted display of this image. I have made a GRUB2 theme already, but can't publish it because the picture is under copyright.