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[Solved] headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

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debian1
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[Solved] headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#1 Post by debian1 »

I upgraded my headless server from Debian 11 to 12 and it went fine. When I rebooted it.
It says:
/dev/mapper/server--vg-root: clean and some numbers etc.
But no login screen.

I thought the upgrade messed up but I can SSH into the server with no issues. Is there any way I can bring the console back in case I ever need to login to it.
Last edited by debian1 on 2023-06-14 18:48, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#2 Post by Random_Troll »

debian1 wrote: 2023-06-08 20:29I upgraded my headless server from Debian 11 to 12
This is far too vague. Please provide (much) more detail. Did you follow the (draft) upgrade guide? Have you checked the systemd journal? If you can't make any sense of it then share it here. Also, Debian 12 doesn't exist until 2023-06-10.
debian1 wrote: 2023-06-08 20:29Is there any way I can bring the console back in case I ever need to login to it.
Check

Code: Select all

systemctl status getty@tty1
^ That is the systemd unit file responsible for the TTY1 login screen.
Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen.

debian1
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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#3 Post by debian1 »

I followed this https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUpgrade

I checked the status and its active and running

/var/log/syslog shows nothing weird. journalctl shows no errors

I did try ATL+CTRL+F1 etc as well. It's like it's frozen

journalctl -u getty@tty1 shows this

Code: Select all

Started getty@tty1.service - Getty on tty1.
Stopping getty@tty1.service - Getty on tty1...
getty@tty1.service: Deactivated successfully.
Stopped getty@tty1.service - Getty on tty1.
Last edited by debian1 on 2023-06-08 21:52, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#4 Post by Random_Troll »

Sounds like your graphics driver isn't loaded. Does adding the systemd.unit=multi-user.target kernel parameter get you to a console login?

If not then post the output of

Code: Select all

lspci -knn | grep -iA3 'vga\|3d\|video'
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debian1
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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#5 Post by debian1 »

Sorry, I do not know where to add the parameter.

The output:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GP107GL [Quadro P400] [10de:1cb3] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company GP107GL [Quadro P400] [103c:11be]
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
Kernel modules: nvidia
It should be using the GPU.
I will reinstall the GPU drivers and see if that resolves it.

debian1
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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#6 Post by debian1 »

The CUDA update broke the crypttab / LUKS auto unlock on. I had to fix it by going to https://askubuntu.com/questions/286284/ ... -dev-mappe
I have spend too much time trying to resolve this issue. I will wait for bookworm to become stable and reinstall the OS on the server.
It doesn't have much on it anyway as it mainly runs docker.

Thank you for the help Random_Troll.

debian1
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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#7 Post by debian1 »

I rebuilt the server and I can confirm this happened again after I installed the nvidia drivers and rebooted.
I used the command

Code: Select all

sudo apt install nvidia-driver firmware-misc-nonfree
Guessing the nvidia drivers are not compatible with Debian 12. When I installed the nvidia container toolkit, the source list said it was not supported. I had to manually edit it.
This proves that it was nothing to do with Debian. It's just the drivers are probably not compatible yet.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#8 Post by sunrat »

nvidia-driver is most definitely supported in Bookworm. Read the Release notes, particularly the section about the new non-free-firmware section of the repo.
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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#9 Post by debian1 »

I get its supported but as soon as I installed on a fresh install and rebooted. Login console stopped working. Before the driver install, after the boot, the screen would stop and then refresh and show login. After the install of the nvidia drivers. The 2nd bit does not happen on the screen.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#10 Post by CynicalDebian »

debian1 wrote: 2023-06-12 06:28 I get its supported but as soon as I installed on a fresh install and rebooted. Login console stopped working. Before the driver install, after the boot, the screen would stop and then refresh and show login. After the install of the nvidia drivers. The 2nd bit does not happen on the screen.
NVIDIA has done a poor job integrating with the modern Linux graphics stack, which usually exposes a framebuffer device at /dev/fb0 (and should create multiple devices in accordance, /dev/fb1 /dev/fb2 etc...) NVIDIA does not want to support this, so they can maintain the ability to update drivers without a system restart. My guess is you don't use a display manager and are booting to TTY.

Without an iGPU things work fine since I believe NVIDIA creates a (fake?) device to always display a console but with an iGPU and newer driver versions the console is actually only appearing on /dev/fb0, your iGPU!

You can easily test this by plugging your display into the iGPU ports on the motherboard and you should have a tty there. To continue using with the dGPU you should be able to disable integrated graphics in your UEFI settings. If you have no such option you could blacklist the kernel module (i915?) instead.

To continue using iGPU + dGPU you can use a display manager which will fix the issue. My guess is NVIDIA doesn't test on machines without display managers.

Edit: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/u ... g/204068/8
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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#11 Post by debian1 »

Thank you. I'll try the onboard GPU and then disable it via BIOS. Hopefully that works. If it doesn't, I'll just live with jot being able to login to the console.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#12 Post by CynicalDebian »

@debian1

Will you let us know if it worked please :).
Be seeing you...

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#13 Post by debian1 »

Yes, just not had a chance to do it.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#14 Post by debian1 »

@CynicalDebian Thank you for the help. You pointed me in the right direction.

In the BIOS I disabled the onboard video and the TTY1 worked. I could see the console to login. To make sure this was the cause, I enabled the onboard video and exact same issue. Disabling it again, and I could see the console.

If anyone else has this issue, try disabling the onboard video via the BIOS and see if it helped.

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Re: headless debian 11 to 12 upgrade - no console login

#15 Post by CynicalDebian »

@debian1

Glad I could help. ^_^

Please prefix the title of the post post [Solved] to help others find the post.
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