While setting up a Ryzen 3990X, Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, 256GB DDR4, CentOS 7 machine:
Monitor : dell up2414q
Background : After properly installing CentOS 7 via USB key I was able to login to the user account in a graphical terminal. The next thing on my plate was to install Nvidia driver (v440) for X86_64.
Upon following install instructions and rebooting the machine I was greeted by a black screen instead of the login screen. The search began. I traced hundreds of forums and none of them said "why" only "what to do" and in fact none were comprehensive.
This was the best thing I found, Dave_B's answer worked after 100s of other solutions did not. I didn't even have to uninstall nvidia driver first, I just reinstalled it overtop. Once I had followed the 5 steps below, I followed the answer in this link and it worked to get me past the black screen and onto the current remaining issue: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/560515/318683
Some things that have proven true and apparently necessary in my case.
- we DO need to disable nouveau, which would otherwise be in the way of the nvidia driver. done via blacklisting and adding to grub config.
- we DO want to modify our grub configuration file
- we DO NOT want to add nvidia_drm.modeset=1 to the grub loader configuration, this ends up fighting with the display manager (gdm, kde etc.)
- we DO want to utilize Xrandr to modify our graphical terminal; will occur at the layer before desktop manager and allow a permanent-configurable solution that persists over reboots.
- we want to add a Modeline in the X11 configuration file which corresponds to the resolution of the Display(s) we are using.
Essentials: At grub loader add the word "single" or the number 3 to the end of the kernel parameters; in order to boot to a usable terminal when dealing with a black graphical terminal.
The question: Now that we have the driver installed and the OS booting into login screen, how can we ensure that 4k resolution appears as 1 tile rather than 2 tiles of 1920x2160? remaining at 60Hz. The nvidia xserver GUI only displays resolutions up to 1920x1080.
Where I'm at: typing "Xrandr" shows the modes that the connected display can utilize. Most lines just have the 2 dimensions but the currently selected display resolution is highlighted by an "*"
The confusing part: I have only plugged in a single monitor(miniDP) to DP(GPU) cable but Xrandr shows 2 connected devices DP-4.8 and DP-4.9. Each of them has 1/2 the desired 4k resolution and they visually look stitched together when at login screen and once loggedin. why are the 2 sides of the screen different colors? Can this be equalized via a setting? This machine will be used in part for 3D modelling rigging animation etc and a true 4k tile with the 10bit color depth that this quadro rtx provides. So, its main use case requires it to have a seemless Display.
Thanks and I will probably add more and references to support. And please, if you find any of those 5 necessary items to be superfluous, tell me why in the comments!! :D