Screen doesn't come on after power-on

Software Phosh
1

Does anyone else have this problem?

From off state, press power button, LED and haptic feedback activate [EDIT: momentarily], but screen stays black, no login screen displays. [EDIT: And the LED turns off, as it should, because the phone is “on,” although the screen doesn’t come on.]

It’s possible to ssh into the phone (a device only needs to be on, not necessarily logged in for this), so I know that the power is on (and draining), but screen is still blank/black.

Workaround: shut down by holding the power button, and try again. Sometimes it takes the 18-second press to enable power-on with an activated screen.

Is it possible that the phone is just running some periodic test in the background before powering up the display?

I’ll file a bug, unless someone can identify an issue in the “user headspace” area that’s easy to correct.

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2

No, at least, not for long. I get the logo and on-screen keyboard within 5 seconds.

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3

That used to be the case for me, too. Not sure what has changed with my L5… or what I might have done to it. :man_shrugging:

This has been going on for several months, btw.

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Would you be interested in reflashing with a new Byzantium image after externally backing up your important files first?

5

Yeah, as a last resort.

I wonder if @dos has any idea what might be the problem. Or @guido.gunther …

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You may be able to gather more information using an external keyboard during the boot process, but I do not know the command to increase the verbosity level.

Another idea that may be affecting bootup is attached external hardware.

7

There is none.

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Maybe some info in the boot log…?

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9

Yes it happens to me, very rarely, but it happens, I suspect it may be related to suspend mode

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I thought of that, too. I don’t have it enabled, though.

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11

ok then, suspend mode is not a suspect anymore :nerd_face:

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12

I had that issue with Suspend so I haven’t used it since…

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13

With Screen you talk about your Display and not the Linux screen bash Script or Program? I think it might be a Hardware Bug or broken Display? I did not have this issue. Can you add USB-C Adapter, Keyboard and open with ctrl + alt + 1 (or some other Number) a Tty-Console? During boot of the Librem 5 it is push the Volume down Button, to see the Messages of Booting or Updates.

If not i might think that your Display or Driver for Visualization is broken…

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Yes, that’s correct. The display. (It remains black when phone is on, until I correct it with a hard restart.)

Before I realized this is what was happening, it was easy to assume my L5 was still off when it was actually powered on, which was risking complete battery drain.

Probably… but maybe finding something suspicious in one of the logs would be less work, if someone has a recommendation of where to look.

Probably not broken. As I said, I can restart and get the display to appear. (At least, so far.)

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What happens if you reboot from that ssh session? Not good enough to resurrect?

What happens if you press the power button briefly? (rather than press-and-hold until it does a hard shutdown)

I’m wondering whether the GUI has failed to start but the phone is in an otherwise completely normal state.

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16

Nothing. It is just blank until I hold the power button for 10 or 18 seconds (there is a little bit of light emanating from the screen)

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17

Same for me, but I haven’t noticed any light from the screen. (Maybe the ambient lighting was too bright to see it, though.)

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18

As I recall, no effect. I’ll test again next time the issue happens. Working fine this morning. :man_shrugging:

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@amarok likely backlight probe failure triggers blank display after power on (#494) · Issues · Librem5 / linux · GitLab

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Thanks, @guido.gunther. I take it there’s nothing we can do for now, except to keep restarting until it works?

1 Like