Way forward after installing with "Basic Graphic Mode"

Ask Fedora
1

For a couple of months, I’ve had my laptop (an oldish Asus) frequently stuck at startup when entering Gnome desktop (as in, completely stuck, with no way to cntrl+alt+F2 into a terminal, etc.), I needed to forcefully power it off, and after about 4-5 (or more) attempts it would eventually start, and then work alright for the rest of the session). Same with both Fedora 41 and after upgrading to Fedora 42. Could be a hardware issue, could be some kernel issue with old Nvidia, I couldn’t figure it out.

Either way, I decided to start anew with a fresh install, and as the standard Fedora install would lead to the same issues, I tried with using the troubleshooting->“Basic Graphic Mode” option when installing.

This worked, as in, now the laptop reliably starts and I can use the laptop with Gnome desktop.

However, there are now some issues. The most important of them, is that external displays connected to through HDMI do not seem to work. In the information screen, I see that instead of the Intel graphics card, I have “software rendering”, which I suspect may be part of the issue.

Somewhat puzzlingly, I haven’t been able to find any substantive reference in the documentation about “basic graphic mode”, i.e., what it does exactly, and what can be done to re-enable some graphics components after having installed successfully. Surely, there’s a way to turn a laptop installed with “basic graphic mode” closer to the standard installation, or at least enable just some basic features (e.g. re-enable the internal intel card, but leave nvidia disabled).

In brief, my questions are:

  • is there really no official documentation about “basic graphics mode”, or am I just missing something obvious?
  • if not, what would be the best way forward for tentatively re-enabling some of the things that “basic graphics mode” has disabled? In particular, I’d be interested in connecting an external monitor, and trying re-enabling the Intel graphics card.

I gather from random posts on reddit and on this forum that tinkering with options at grub may be part of the solution, but I haven’t quite understood what some of the suggested edits would do (and either way, they didn’t seem to work in my case). I still end up thinking that I must be missing something that could well be documented somewhere.

2

Check the output:

head -n -0 /etc/default/grub /etc/kernel/cmdline /proc/cmdline
3

Thanks for your reply.

Here is the output:

==> /etc/default/grub <==
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset vga=791 rhgb quiet"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=true

==> /etc/kernel/cmdline <==
root=UUID=aaff1e67-93dc-4ef5-96ad-dacbb417c350 ro rootflags=subvol=root nomodeset vga=791 rhgb quiet 

==> /proc/cmdline <==
BOOT_IMAGE=(hd0,gpt2)/vmlinuz-6.14.5-300.fc42.x86_64 root=UUID=aaff1e67-93dc-4ef5-96ad-dacbb417c350 ro rootflags=subvol=root nomodeset vga=791 rhgb quiet

I might have changed the (substantively irrelevant) grub timeout, but I’d expect all the rest to be ultimately the same as what any other person installing Fedora 42 with “basic graphics mode” would get.

4

Disabling basic graphic mode:

sudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --remove-args="nomodeset vga=791"
sudo systemctl reboot

If the original issue recurs, you can boot in basic graphic mode by adding the relevant parameters, see steps 1-5 here:
How to Reset the root Password :: Fedora Docs

5

Rather than updating the kernel options with grubby, I edited them at startup. I could get the laptop to start a couple of times (with full graphics as expected, and external display working), but mostly, it would just remain stuck at some point during boot.

Running again with the previous kernel arguments after an unsuccessful boot would first startup the session with 800*600 display, but then restarting again, would bring back things to “normal”, i.e. expected resolution, but still software rendering and no external display.

6

Following up on this, I understand that the implicit reply to the previous questions would be:

  • there is no official documentation about “basic graphics mode”
  • ultimately, what it does is just adding nomodeset vga=791 to kernel arguments; once you remove those arguments, you are back with a standard Fedora installation

As for the way forward, unless there are other variations to nomodeset with some intermediate solutions, I suppose I should proceed with looking for different solutions for disabling the gpu, or disabling the intel graphics card, etc., and take it from there. Again, I find replies scattered here and there in various forums, but I understand there is no structured troubleshooting documentation along these lines.

Any support is as always very welcome.

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