I switched from Nvidia to AMD GPU. Now Fedora Silverblue can't boot

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1

Hello,

I confirmed the new graphics card works by booting to a live Fedora workstation system.

I tried adding the following parameters to Grub:

radeon.si_support=0 radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=1

I was using Nouveau so there are no Nvidia drivers to remove.

I took photos while trying to boot with the Radeon Firepro W5100 installed.

There is a pause happening at the line “basic.target – Basic System”:

IMG_20250217_050012_175
IMG_20250217_050012_1751920×2560 885 KB

Then there is another bottleneck when systemd-udevd.service times out after 1 minute 30:

IMG_20250217_050101_799
IMG_20250217_050101_7991920×2560 1.04 MB

Finally, Gnome Display Manager fails to display the desktop.

IMG_20250217_050208_318
IMG_20250217_050208_3181920×1440 632 KB

When I put the old Nvidia card back in, it works.

1 Like
3

Can you reach a text console (either by switching to it after boot, or by booting into multi-user mode)? From there you could try an rpm-ostree upgrade, after having pinned the current deployment. If the new deployment still not working, maybe regenerating client-side initramfs (with rpm-ostree initramfs --enable) might help?

Alternatively, while booted with NVIDIA GPU, can you post the output of rpm-ostree kargs and that of rpm-ostree status -v?

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4

Thanks for your answer. I booted to a console, which at least allowed me to run the commands you suggested.

Unfortunately, they didn’t improve the issue. Another problem that I am now aware of is that when I execute systemctl reboot, the progress wheel spins a little bit and then it disappears leaving only the Fedora logo and the computer hanging. It is unresponsive when I press the ESC key.

5

We would need at least the output of rpm-ostree status and cat /proc/cmdline

6

Meanwhile, what do you think of this error?

Invalid callback to read register
kernel bug at drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/amdgpu_device.c

IMG_20250217_102408_551
IMG_20250217_102408_5511920×1440 359 KB

7

As it says, this looks like a kernel bug so you should report that in Bugzilla for the kernel.

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Note that this is a 10 year old card, targeting professionals: AMD FirePro W5100 Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

It might need the proprietary AMD driver to work well.

1 Like
9

Why does it work with Fedora Worstation 39 live using the amdgpu driver?

It also worked when I did a fresh install of Silverblue on a spare drive, but I would rather not have to reinstall.

10

I don’t know. What version of Silverblue did you install? Fedora Workstation 39 is EOL now so maybe it used to work but it does not anymore?

11

You are supposed to set one or the other of si_support or cik_support, not both.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU#Set_module_parameters_in_kernel_command_line

12

Thanks for the tip. My card belongs to the Sea Islands generation, so I need to use the radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1 parameters.

Yet, I still can’t boot the graphical environment unless I add nomodeset, but then no driver is loaded and the system falls back on software rendering.

13

It was Silverblue 40, which I am using now.

15

I’ve booted F41 Workstation LiveUSB on a Dell Precision M6500 with ATI FireGL M7820 (Radeon HD 5000 series); OpenGL worked fine, but afaik it’s older than SI or AMDGPU support.

16

Update: I tried upgrading the fresh install to Silverblue 41 and now I can’t boot this one either. It also broke the Grub menu, causing it to appear only briefly and drop me to the shell. It is impossible to to press e fast enough to edit an entry.

17

Yep, the AMD card stopped working with Fedora 41. The boot process hangs as follow:

IMG_20250222_072325_507
IMG_20250222_072325_5071920×1440 666 KB

Meanwhile my old Nvidia Geforce GT 730 still works. Both are from 2014.

I bought the AMD hoping for more stability with the amdgpu driver compared to Nouveau, which was apparently causing frequent crashes. Oh well…

Would the more recent not-end-of-life Radeon Pro WX 5100 fix the issue?

18

To clarify, the above was with Fedora workstation 41 live.

19

FWIW, there is a report of that video card working on Fedora Linux in the Linux hardware database:

20

But only “detected” with Fedora 39.

https://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:1002-67c7-1002-0b0d&hwid=c39db3e058bf

21

I’m not sure if that indicates a problem with Fedora Linux 39 or if it just means the reporter didn’t bother to confirm that the device was working properly.

Edit:

There is an error in the xorg.log.

[1550834.421] (EE) /dev/dri/card0: failed to set DRM interface version 1.4: Permission denied

But “permission denied” looks more like some sort of configuration error than it does a problem with the hardware. I would consider that report inconclusive.

22

Okay, I didn’t know the status was manually reported by the user.

I wonder what changed between version 40 and 41 to break support for my AMD card, but it doesn’t really matter to me anymore because I’m sending it back. Still, I hope Fedora will fix this issue.

Thanks to everyone that chimed in.