Black screen with static terminal cursor after Fedora 44 workstation upgrade

Ask Fedora
1

Hello fellow Fedora users and devs,

I apologize in advance for possibly not having all the info on my issues in upgrading to Fedora 44 recently, as it was quite the troubleshooting adventure so far and also life got in the way. I will however try to document as many details as I can remember.

So, upgraded to Fedora 44 and all seemed like it was going well until after the restart and I was met with the black screen and static cursor line top left of my screen right before the Gnome login should’ve shown up.

I tried many ways to get my hands on some kind of error output, I’m quite new to things like tty and such, despite daily driving Linux for slowly reaching 2 years now. I took the best picture I could of the only tty output on an error I could get into and attached it.

Oh and none of the alt-f3’s to route to tty from that black screen worked, only adding “3” into the boot options in grub got me into it after hard restarting the PC. I googled furiously and even resorted to trying llm’s as an investigative tool because google wasn’t giving me many leads to go on and I got desperate lol.

The only thing that made things mostly work was a completely accidental installation of xfce (from a random suggestion from an llm, I think it was Claude) that gave me the xfce login that let me login to gnome. This hacky workaround worked fairly well until the most recent update which includes the 7.01 kernel, I think. when I restarted after the update, this time it gave me a frozen tty login with no way around it. I rebooted into grub and rolled back to the 6.19.14 kernel from which I’m writing to y’all right now. Oh and this entire time in my system info it still says Gnome 49, so maybe there’s some kind of breakage in the original upgrade despite no sign of such besides the black screen surprise on initial reboot? I’m not sure.

My best guess is there is some kind of an issue with the display manager, but I’m completely at a loss besides that, and I really would like to fix this proper so I don’t continue depending on the xfce workaround and avoid any updates for fear of future breakage.

For reference, I’m running an AMD Ryzen 5 7600x on a b650m gaming plus wifi motherboard, 32gb of RAM with an RX 6800 XT GPU.

Thank you all in advance for taking the time to chime in with any help and thanks to the devs for all your awesome work. Fedora has been, besides this issue, the best distro I’ve used after much distro-hopping both for personal and professional use.

K76UeLFX
K76UeLFX2048Ă—1537 214 KB

2

Welcome to Fedora @tattz

This is an indication that you still have x11 session on login. The gnome alias GDM not supports that anymore.
I believe xfce is using lightdm which supports wayland and x11 sessions.

3

Much love for the warm welcome!

that’s even more confusing, unless I’m understanding poorly.
I was running wayland on F43, sorry I forgot to mention that. Been running wayland for many moths if not longer. When I logged into gnome using xfce’s lightdm the default was gnome on wayland as I expected it would’ve stayed through the upgrade. I never deliberately changed anything to x11 as wayland is stable for me for all my use cases. So I’m even more at a loss about how to fix this lol.

A step-by-step would be ideal as I feel I’m way out of my depth with this. I feel like I understand only on a surface level

4

Ok, let’s see then. I guess in the log you will find more information. As an example first the boot errors:

journalctl --no-tail --no-hostname -S "today" -p err

# if you let the "-p err" away you could fiter with "|grep -i gdm"
# to see errors/warnings of the Gnomes Desktop Manager
# you have to test to start Gnome to see errors from today.

After setting up, could you enter into Fedora and check if there are updates?

5

ok do you want me to try to make gdm active instead of lightdm first before running this? and do you want me to do the same editing the boot parameter so I can get into tty as I did before?

I think I can dig up the commands on how to do that again, because if I just run this command now it only gives me the error that my bluetooth handsfree is disconnected (which I deliberately did, I don’t use it and it switching on me was getting in my way).

6

Please run inxi -Fzxx and post the result here as preformatted text. (you may need to install inxi). This sounds like it may be a graphics issue and we need more details.

7

seems I already have inxi installed, here’s the output:

System:
  Kernel: 7.0.4-200.fc44.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 16.1.1
  Desktop: GNOME v: 49.4 tk: GTK v: 3.24.52 wm: gnome-shell dm: LightDM
    Distro: Fedora Linux 44 (Workstation Edition)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B650M GAMING PLUS WIFI
    serial: <superuser required> Firmware: UEFI vendor: American Megatrends LLC.
    v: F40b date: 04/20/2026
CPU:
  Info: 6-core model: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 4
    rev: 2 cache: L1: 384 KiB L2: 6 MiB L3: 32 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2992 min/max: 427/5457 boost: enabled cores: 1: 2992
    2: 2992 3: 2992 4: 2992 5: 2992 6: 2992 7: 2992 8: 2992 9: 2992 10: 2992
    11: 2992 12: 2992 bogomips: 112581
  Flags-basic: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a
    ssse3 svm
Graphics:
  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Navi 21 [Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT
    / 6900 XT] vendor: Sapphire driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: RDNA-2 pcie:
    speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: DP-2,HDMI-A-1
    empty: DP-1,DP-3,Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:73bf
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Raphael vendor: Gigabyte
    driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: RDNA-2 pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports:
    active: none empty: DP-4, DP-5, DP-6, HDMI-A-2, Writeback-2
    bus-ID: 12:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:164e temp: 42.0 C
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.22 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.11
    compositor: gnome-shell driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    unloaded: modesetting,radeon alternate: fbdev,vesa dri: radeonsi
    gpu: amdgpu display-ID: 0
  Monitor-1: DP-2 model: Lenovo LEN T22i-10 res: 1920x1080 dpi: 102
    diag: 546mm (21.5")
  Monitor-2: HDMI-A-1 model: Lenovo LEN T22i-10 res: 1920x1080 dpi: 102
    diag: 546mm (21.5")
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: amd mesa v: 26.0.6 glx-v: 1.4 es-v: 3.2
    direct-render: yes renderer: AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (radeonsi navi21 ACO DRM
    3.64 7.0.4-200.fc44.x86_64) device-ID: 1002:73bf display-ID: :0.0
  API: Vulkan v: 1.4.341 surfaces: N/A device: 0 type: discrete-gpu
    driver: mesa radv device-ID: 1002:73bf device: 1 type: integrated-gpu
    driver: mesa radv device-ID: 1002:164e device: 2 type: cpu
    driver: mesa llvmpipe device-ID: 10005:0000
  API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
  Info: Tools: api: glxinfo,vulkaninfo de: xfce4-display-settings
    x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Audio:
  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Navi 21/23 HDMI/DP Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab28
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Radeon High Definition Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 12:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:1640
  Device-3: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Ryzen HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 12:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3
  API: ALSA v: k7.0.4-200.fc44.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: JACK v: 1.9.22 status: off with: a2jmidid status: off
  Server-2: PipeWire v: 1.6.4 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
    4: pw-jack type: plugin
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel
    pcie: speed: 5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: d000 bus-ID: 08:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8125
  IF: enp8s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8851BE PCIe 802.11ax Wireless Network
    driver: rtw89_8851be v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 port: c000
    bus-ID: 09:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:b851
  IF: wlp9s0 state: up mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Realtek Bluetooth Radio driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 1.0
    speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-7:2 chip-ID: 0bda:b850
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 2 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.3
    lmp-v: 12
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 5.55 TiB used: 2.34 TiB (42.1%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: TeamGroup model: TM8FP6002T size: 1.86 TiB
    speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 22.9 C
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: TeamGroup model: TM8FP6002T size: 1.86 TiB
    speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 24.9 C
  ID-3: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST2000LM015-2E8174 size: 1.82 TiB
    speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter>
  ID-4: /dev/sdb model: General USB Flash Disk size: 7.47 GiB type: USB
    rev: 2.0 spd: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 serial: <filter>
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 1.83 TiB used: 873.71 GiB (46.7%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p5
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 525.9 MiB (54.0%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p4
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 2 GiB used: 719.7 MiB (35.2%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p1
  ID-4: /home size: 1.83 TiB used: 873.71 GiB (46.7%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme1n1p5
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 100
    dev: /dev/zram0
  ID-2: swap-2 type: partition size: 34.05 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    priority: -1 dev: /dev/nvme1n1p3
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 56.4 C mobo: 34.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
  GPU: device: amdgpu temp: 43.0 C device: amdgpu temp: 38.0 C mem: 34.0 C
    fan: 0
Info:
  Memory: total: 32 GiB note: est. available: 30.45 GiB
    used: 10.64 GiB (35.0%)
  Processes: 531 Power: uptime: 11h 16m wakeups: 1 Init: systemd v: 259
    default: graphical
  Packages: pm: rpm pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm pm: flatpak pkgs: 103
    Compilers: gcc: 16.1.1 Shell: fish v: 4.6.0 running-in: ptyxis-agent
    inxi: 3.3.40
8

Before we do anything else, have you had a look in the known issues (Ask Fedora > Common Issues ), if there is a workaround/solution?

About the issue with the static cursor I mainly read about NVIDIA & Radeon GPU’s to have this, meaning updating first the drivers (as @computersavvy allready mentioned too).

However, that is not ok:

System:
  Kernel: 7.0.4-200.fc44.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 16.1.1
  Desktop: GNOME v: 49.4

Let’s check that about Gnome 49:

 sudo dnf list gdm*
 # output (Installed packages) > gdm.x86_64 1:50.0-1.fc44 fedora (what I have)
 
 sudo dnf list gnome*
 # check if you see "version 50 & .fc44 as package name"

Have a look if you have in the /etc/dnf/dnf.conf something like:

excludepkgs=mesa*

#If you have a excludepkgs just put a "#" in front (As I do with the comments).

check if the below command will try to upgrade something from 49.x to 50.x about gnome.
My kernel is 7.0.7 already, it might will upgrade it too.

sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
# and apply if it has some.
9

of course I did, there is no mention of a standard Fedora 44 workstation running Gnome that had this issue. Just double-checked now and the closest common issue I saw is Fedora 43 on KDE, which is not what I’m running, and seems that got fixed by KDE in November.

Aren’t AMD drivers baked into the kernel? Don’t they update with the kernel? So if the black screen happened after the upgrade, the latest drivers would be the ones causing the issue, if it’s, in fact, a driver issue, right? In such a case, I’d assume I’d need to rollback drivers instead, like I had to by choosing the older Fedora in grub.

Also wouldn’t drivers affect xfce’s lightdm as well? And like I said in my main post, the most recent update gave me a frozen unresponsive tty, so that’s a dead end until I fix the underlying issue first, I figure. Feel free to correct me if I’m misunderstanding,

Here’s the output for those commands:

tattz@fedora ~> sudo dnf list gdm
[sudo] password for tattz: 
Updating and loading repositories:
 Fedora 44 - x86_64                                                          100% |  47.7 KiB/s |  43.8 KiB |  00m01s
>>> Curl error (56): Failure when receiving data from the peer for https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-44&arch=x86_64 [Recv failure: Connection reset by peer] - https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-44&arch=x86_64
Repositories loaded.
Installed packages (available for reinstall, available for upgrade)
gdm.x86_64 1:50.0-1.fc44 fedora

Available packages (available for reinstall, available for upgrade)
gdm.i686   1:50.0-1.fc44 updates-testing
gdm.i686   1:50.0-1.fc44 fedora
tattz@fedora ~> sudo dnf list gnome 
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
No matching packages to list

this is everything I see in that /etc/dnf/dnf.conf document:

# see `man dnf.conf` for defaults and possible options

[main]
10

It is dificult when you first install Gnome and then change to

Now you are on KDE?

Best ist when you decide on which DE you want to have help and then stay on it, till we found out what is going wrong.
Do you get the Black screen with static terminal also when you boot with the KDE ISO?

11

…was I not clear I my original post? Apologies if so.

I was originally on Fedora workstation 43 which ships with Gnome as default. I was upgrading to 44, also on Gnome as default. The black screen happened during that update process.

Never did I run or install KDE. You asked me if I looked up the common issues, which I did. I just mentioned the only post about a similar-ish issue is involving KDE and fedora 43, which apparently got resolved with a KDE update back in November. But that common issue is inapplicable in my case because I don’t use KDE. KDE is not in any way involved in my specific issue.

To recap: not finding a similar enough issue to my own with regular google search when I first came across the black screen once the PC rebooted as part of the fedora 44 update process, my last resort was to use chatgpt and claude to troubleshoot. That is where I discovered changing the boot parameters to get into tty after hard reboots which allowed me to at least uncover the error I took a picture of and attached to my original post. After many attempted fixes, one of the suggestions from the AI/LLM was to install xfce as a workaround. I don’t remember all the steps that got me there, I’m sorry I didn’t document every single step, but disabling gdm and using lightdm allowed the PC to boot into some kind of login. The login is obviously xfce’s but it logs me into Gnome as I had it before attempting the update as far as I could tell. This was a hacky workaround, but it worked until the latest update.

Due to having multiple jobs and this PC being my main work machine as well, I didn’t get around to chime in on here with the issue until now. To be clear, all I want is for this system to update Gnome as per usual, the display manager to work, all of that. I was never interested in changing DE’s, that was a last ditch attempt and the only thing that worked to get me out of the black screen dead end and get me to a point where I could at least run commands and uncover more errors or clues as to what went wrong. I am, however, not that well versed in these things so I don’t know where to go about moving forward from here, and I can’t even risk updating now to the most recent update, as it seems that that just boots into a frozen and unresponsive tty now.

Let me know if I can clarify anything else.

12 
sudo dnf list gnome*

A small detail the asterisk, to get all packages which start with gnome. A pure gnome package not exists. That is why there is no output, sorry for overseeing that deetail.

13

same output for some reason..

tattz@fedora ~ [1]> sudo dnf list gnome*
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
No matching packages to list
tattz@fedora ~ [1]>

I can assure you I’m running Gnome, I can even take a picture

14

try

sudo dnf4 list gnome*

It can be that if you worked with software-app just, there is no package listed in dnf5=dnf till F43.

15 
tattz@fedora ~ [1]> sudo dnf4 list gnome*
Copr repo for quickshell owned by errornointernet                                     23 kB/s |  18 kB     00:00    
Copr repo for GNOME-X11 owned by frantisekz                                           31 kB/s |  16 kB     00:00    
Copr repo for betterdiscordctl owned by observeroftime                               2.9 kB/s | 942  B     00:00    
Copr repo for PyCharm owned by phracek                                               3.9 kB/s | 2.0 kB     00:00    
Copr repo for hyprland owned by solopasha                                            115 kB/s |  66 kB     00:00    
Adoptium                                                                             9.4 kB/s | 5.7 kB     00:00    
Docker CE Stable - x86_64                                                             20 kB/s | 7.2 kB     00:00    
Fedora 44 - x86_64                                                                   8.9 MB/s |  35 MB     00:03    
Fedora 44 openh264 (From Cisco) - x86_64                                             1.1 kB/s | 1.3 kB     00:01    
Fedora 44 - x86_64 - Updates                                                         4.3 MB/s | 7.0 MB     00:01    
Fedora 44 - x86_64 - Test Updates                                                    2.2 MB/s | 5.8 MB     00:02    
google-chrome                                                                        3.9 kB/s | 1.9 kB     00:00    
RPM Fusion for Fedora 44 - Free                                                      120 kB/s | 144 kB     00:01    
RPM Fusion for Fedora 44 - Free - Updates                                             34 kB/s |  25 kB     00:00    
RPM Fusion for Fedora 44 - Nonfree                                                    90 kB/s |  86 kB     00:00    
RPM Fusion for Fedora 44 - Nonfree - NVIDIA Driver                                   7.5 kB/s | 5.6 kB     00:00    
RPM Fusion for Fedora 44 - Nonfree - Steam                                           1.7 kB/s | 1.3 kB     00:00    
RPM Fusion for Fedora 44 - Nonfree - Updates                                          26 kB/s |  17 kB     00:00    
Terra 44                                                                             272  B/s | 374  B     00:01    
Terra 44                                                                             812 kB/s | 831  B     00:00    
Importing GPG key 0xDE226D6F:
 Userid     : "Terra 44 <security@fyralabs.com>"
 Fingerprint: AE09 157A 4DE8 8B49 7EA1 D5D3 00CD AB43 DE22 6D6F
 From       : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-terra44
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Terra 44                                                                             669 kB/s | 1.3 MB     00:01    
Error: No matching Packages to list
tattz@fedora ~ [1]>
16
  1. When updating with a kernel which works, the working kernel will not been touched/removed.
  2. However what gives me more a headache is that you have so many copr repos active and that you use the terra repository.

Can you tell us how you made the upgrade? With the Software Application in Gnome?

17

It is strange that you have a GNOME system with no GNOME packages. What does cat /etc/os-release show?

I guess you could (re)install GNOME with sudo dnf install @workstation-product-environment? You might also want to run sudo dnf distro-sync after doing that.

Edited to add the @ in front of workstation-product-environment.

18

Try sudo dnf4 list "gnome*"

Without the quotes, any files matching the gnome* pattern in your working directory will interfere with the search.

19

dnf4 history and dnf history will show different results according to how each package was installed.

But dnf4 list and dnf list (which is the same as dnf5 list) should give the same results.

20

yes, standard software application upgrade. I’m not sure either, I do use betterdiscord and at one point in the past tried learning hyprland but I don’t remember the rest. Maybe my memory is failing on those, but as far as I know I was able to uninstall and autoremove hyprland completely, followed a guide for that at the time.