CentOS-7 Screen Black After Boot

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Hello Community,

This is my first ever email to CentOS community. Firstly, CentOS is a great open-source operating system. I have been using it for years and recommending the same for production use to our customers.

I have installed CentOS-7 operating system couple of days ago and everything was working fine. Yesterday, the screen got struck and the whole system was unresponsive, after a long wait, i have restarted the system. Since, then, i can only see the black screen and GUI is not coming up.

I can remotely login to the system from Putty and can operate without any issues, the only issue is that GUI is not coming up.

I have installed CentOS-7 server-GUI. Any help would be appreciated here.

Regards, Venkata B N

8 thoughts on - CentOS-7 Screen Black After Boot

  • great whole

    Are you seeing the same behaviour if you choose the diagnostic kernel which has very basic display support? What types or graphic card are you using?

  • Sorry, i am not sure what graphic card, i am using. But, all i could say is that, it was working absolutely fine and all-of-a-sudden displaying a blank screen.

    If this was the problem right from when i installed the software, that is understandable. Not sure, why it worked before and not after.

    By googling, i found out that it could be a problem with configuration of some files in /etc/X11/ location ??

    Below are the messages from /var/log/Xorg.0.log file, does these mean anything ?

    753 [ 27.979] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
    754 [ 27.979] (II) This device may have been added with another device file.
    755 [ 27.979] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel PCH
    Line Out CLFE (/dev/input/event16)
    756 [ 27.979] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
    757 [ 27.979] (II) This device may have been added with another device file.
    758 [ 27.979] (II) config/udev: Adding input device HDA Intel PCH
    Line Out Side (/dev/input/event17)
    759 [ 27.979] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
    760 [ 27.979] (II) This device may have been added with another device file.
    761 [ 27.979] (II) config/udev: Adding input device PC Speaker
    (/dev/input/event6)
    762 [ 27.979] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
    763 [ 27.979] (II) This device may have been added with another device file.
    764 [ 27.983] reporting 6 9 18 141
    765 [ 28.132] reporting 6 9 18 141
    766 [ 28.183] reporting 6 9 18 141

    Regards, Venkata B N

  • Hello,

    I have the same problem again today with CentOS-7.

    I re-installed with GNOME Desktop and also configured two VMs in it, all was working fine and i left the system locked overnight. When i tried to unlock the next day morning, screen only shows up black. Again, i cannot see the GUI. I can login to the system though.

    Any help would be appreciated here.

    Thanks, VB

  • What are you using to lock the screen? Some of the screensavers can be bad news on certain video cards (as I’ve learned the hard way) and can cause just exactly that to happen. In that case, the screensaver has locked up your video card.

    If this is the case, try a different screensaver. I suggest “black screen only” for testing purposes.

  • I did the following and rebooted, all worked fine. I am not sure if that is the solution.

    [root@buildhost ~]# systemctl set-default graphical.target

    Regards, VB

  • Hi Venkata,

    Can you please let me know the steps which you have followed for re-installing the GNOME? I am having a similar problem on one of our system.

    Regards Hersh

  • To my understanding, when you install CentOS-7 with options ServerGUI or GNOME Desktop and leave the system for long time locked, you will notice that CentOS slips into textual interface mode and you will not be able to get GUI which means, you can login to the system and cannot see GUI screen.

    I have found the following steps on google, which helped me get through this problem

    systemctl disable gdm.service systemctl enable lightdm.service systemctl set-default graphical.target

    First command was successful, second one error’d out. Not sure what to do, i reverted back the first command and executed the third command and rebooted. All worked fine !

    Below is the log –

    [root@buildhost ~]# systemctl disable gdm.service Removed symlink /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service.

    [root@buildhost ~]# systemctl enable lightdm.service Failed to execute operation: Access denied

    [root@buildhost ~]# systemctl disable gdm.service

    [root@buildhost ~]# systemctl enable gdm.service Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service to
    /usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service.

    [root@buildhost ~]# systemctl set-default graphical.target Removed symlink /etc/systemd/system/default.target.

    I think, the last command made sense to me.

    Regards, VB

  • Thanks.

    I have tried the commands which you have suggested but, unfortunately they did not work for me. I just reinstalled the server.

    Regards Hersh