Black logon screen unless safe boot is used - NVidia Quadro K600

[Chris303]

My problem is that I have not been able to configure the graphics properly in Yosemite. I can only boot & login in safe mode. Without safe mode I always get a black login screen but with an operational mouse cursor.

I have tried various combinations. With all of them I can at best manage to boot in safe mode, in which case the system is then fully stable. The display is at full resolution (1920x1080) but the graphics is noticeably slow in normal use and hopeless with video. Using the instructions in other threads on the forum, I have installed the NVidia drivers to try to fix this but to no avail. I have looked through many posts but can't find quite the same symptoms that I have.

It seems no matter what I do, if i boot without -x flag then the login screen is not visible. In some very rare cases i have managed to type in my password and then the graphics is displayed after logging in. Usually this does not work. Once i did get into the desktop this way and saw that the NVidia "web driver" was running (i could run the NV config tool to check, in safe mode this will not run). Nonetheless, the graphics in this case were not right anyway - flickering on web pages etc., overall worse than i get in safe mode.

When I try connecting to this box remotely using VNC, this also displays a black screen in normal mode but works in safe mode. I can get in using SSH, and from there ran kextstat to show what was loaded in normal mode. The graphics related entries seem to be:

com.nvidia.NVDAStartup (10.0.1)
com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily (2.4.1)
com.apple.AppleGraphicsDeviceControl (3.7.21)
com.nvidia.web.NVDAResmanWeb (10.0.1)
com.nvidia.web.NVDAGK100HalWeb (10.0.1)
com.nvidia.web.GeForceWeb (10.0.1)
com.apple.driver.AppleGraphicsControl (3.7.21)
com.apple.driver.AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy (3.7.7)
com.nvidia.CUDA (1.1.0)

Perhaps there are other diagnostics I can run from the remote shell?

I would be happy with the setup if i could boot in normal mode but perhaps not have the full acceleration of the GPU, so long as general use of 2D apps is fine for web, video etc.

Further details:
OS:
OSX 10.10.1 (14B25) Kernel Version 14.0.0
I think this is using Clover.

I have tried boot options:
nv_drv=1 with and without
GraphicsEnabler=Yes and No
InjectNvidia true and false
InjectIntel true and false
For the combinations that boot, none work without safe mode.

Current flags:
-x -v slide=0 dart=0 kext-dev-mode=1

Hardware:
HP xw6600 Workstation with:
Dual Xeon 5240 (4-core)
24Gb DDR2 ECC DRAM
Broadcom 5755 Gigabit NIC
Realtek ALC262 Audio
(Note, xw6600 has no onboard graphics)
NVidia K600 PCIe card (Kepler GPU). One 1920x1080 monitor connected, will connect 2nd later.
Intel DC S3500 240Gb SATA SSD. Disk controller set to legacy IDE compatibility mode at present.
A SATA HDD with a backup OSX installation (in the same state as described here)


THANKS IN ADVANCE!

 

[Chris303]

I guess this is an unusual issue... I'd be grateful if someone could give me their view on whether:
a) the black logon screen is likely due something that I simply haven't configured correctly (being a newbie), or
b) the NVidia Quadro K600 is not known/likely to work properly ?

It seems so close! .. I suppose I could reluctantly buy another graphics card... I see GT 640 and GT 740 are mentioned for instance.

Thanks.

 

[VioletDragon]

My problem is that I have not been able to configure the graphics properly in Yosemite. I can only boot & login in safe mode. Without safe mode I always get a black login screen but with an operational mouse cursor.

I have tried various combinations. With all of them I can at best manage to boot in safe mode, in which case the system is then fully stable. The display is at full resolution (1920x1080) but the graphics is noticeably slow in normal use and hopeless with video. Using the instructions in other threads on the forum, I have installed the NVidia drivers to try to fix this but to no avail. I have looked through many posts but can't find quite the same symptoms that I have.

It seems no matter what I do, if i boot without -x flag then the login screen is not visible. In some very rare cases i have managed to type in my password and then the graphics is displayed after logging in. Usually this does not work. Once i did get into the desktop this way and saw that the NVidia "web driver" was running (i could run the NV config tool to check, in safe mode this will not run). Nonetheless, the graphics in this case were not right anyway - flickering on web pages etc., overall worse than i get in safe mode.

When I try connecting to this box remotely using VNC, this also displays a black screen in normal mode but works in safe mode. I can get in using SSH, and from there ran kextstat to show what was loaded in normal mode. The graphics related entries seem to be:

com.nvidia.NVDAStartup (10.0.1)
com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily (2.4.1)
com.apple.AppleGraphicsDeviceControl (3.7.21)
com.nvidia.web.NVDAResmanWeb (10.0.1)
com.nvidia.web.NVDAGK100HalWeb (10.0.1)
com.nvidia.web.GeForceWeb (10.0.1)
com.apple.driver.AppleGraphicsControl (3.7.21)
com.apple.driver.AppleGraphicsDevicePolicy (3.7.7)
com.nvidia.CUDA (1.1.0)

Perhaps there are other diagnostics I can run from the remote shell?

I would be happy with the setup if i could boot in normal mode but perhaps not have the full acceleration of the GPU, so long as general use of 2D apps is fine for web, video etc.

Further details:
OS:
OSX 10.10.1 (14B25) Kernel Version 14.0.0
I think this is using Clover.

I have tried boot options:
nv_drv=1 with and without
GraphicsEnabler=Yes and No
InjectNvidia true and false
InjectIntel true and false
For the combinations that boot, none work without safe mode.

Current flags:
-x -v slide=0 dart=0 kext-dev-mode=1

Hardware:
HP xw6600 Workstation with:
Dual Xeon 5240 (4-core)
24Gb DDR2 ECC DRAM
Broadcom 5755 Gigabit NIC
Realtek ALC262 Audio
(Note, xw6600 has no onboard graphics)
NVidia K600 PCIe card (Kepler GPU). One 1920x1080 monitor connected, will connect 2nd later.
Intel DC S3500 240Gb SATA SSD. Disk controller set to legacy IDE compatibility mode at present.
A SATA HDD with a backup OSX installation (in the same state as described here)


THANKS IN ADVANCE!

GraphicsEnabler=Yes or GraphicsEnabler=No isn't valid with Clover. Its (inject nvidia false or true). Be sure that (inject nvidia) is set to false. Boot with nv_disabled=1 install nvidia web drivers then add nvda_drv=1 to config.plist.

 

[Chris303]

Thanks very much Voilet. I have spotted one silly mistake which is that whilst i have both Chameleon and Clover UI tools loaded it is Chameleon not Clover that is actually installed as the bootloader. I've tried experimenting with the settings and when i get a black screen, checking via remote SSH to run kextstat and see which kexts are loaded. So far i see the same black screen with either Apple's NVidia driver or NVidia's WebDriver ones.. Will keep trying.

 

[VioletDragon]

Thanks very much Voilet. I have spotted one silly mistake which is that whilst i have both Chameleon and Clover UI tools loaded it is Chameleon not Clover that is actually installed as the bootloader. I've tried experimenting with the settings and when i get a black screen, checking via remote SSH to run kextstat and see which kexts are loaded. So far i see the same black screen with either Apple's NVidia driver or NVidia's WebDriver ones.. Will keep trying.

Try not (injecting) with Chameleon. Try GraphicsEnabler=No if you still have a black screen then its most likely a PCI Root issue so you will need to boot with GraphicsEnabler=No PCIRootUID=1.

 

[slim.jim]

Switch to Clover

 

[Chris303]

Thanks Guys.

First I've tried Voilet's suggestions to no avail.
I tried GraphicsEnabler=No and tried both PCIRootUID=1 and PCIRootUID=0. This was with nvda_drv removed. In both cases, after it gets past the point of mounting the filesystems it goes to a grey screen with mouse cursor. After about 10s this reverts to a black screen. When I SSH in, i can see the Apple NVidia drivers were loaded. In the Chameleon UI there is a (?) icon on "PCIRoot". When I click that it says "No PCIRoot detected".

Next I have booted it in safe mode and then tried to switch over to Clover but now I've really messed it up! The Clover bootloader I installed does not see the volume that I was booting. I booted the system from my 'backup' OSX installation on another volume, then tried to reinstall Chameleon in place of Clover. That resulted in a KP which recurs when I boot the affected volume.

I have a EVGA GT 740 card on its way so will reinstall from scratch with that card next week. In the meantime i might try to find why I cannot create a working bootable USB - I have only managed to sucessfully boot/install from burning an image to CD.

Contrary to the instructions on this site, I can only boot a USB stick if i initialise it as MBR rather than GUID Partition Table. I have used UniBeast to write a DMG image onto it but not to successfully start OSX. If I have the time and cant get that to work i may start a new thread. Will comment on this one when I get the new Graphics card.

 

[Chris303]

Final update. In summary the K600 doesn't seem to work with OSX (not a hardware fault - was fine with Windows 10). I have rebuilt my system with the GT 740 and it is working quite well - certainly no black screen nonsense.

One remaining odd thing is that although I have nvda_drv=1, NVIDIA driver preferences shows the OSX driver is chosen. If I select NVidia web driver, it reverts after i reboot. When I look at it using kextstat it does seem to be running the NVidia driver..

The issues i mention above creating the bootable USB and installing Clover are due to the older SATA hardware on this PC. It needed the "BIOS block" mode for the bootloader. On the USB stick this meant finding the 'boot7' Clover boot file and replacing the default boot file with this.

 

[slim.jim]

One remaining odd thing is that although I have nvda_drv=1, NVIDIA driver preferences shows the OSX driver is chosen. If I select NVidia web driver, it reverts after i reboot. When I look at it using kextstat it does seem to be running the NVidia driver..

The driver manager is looking for that boot flag in the boot-args stored in NVRAM. If NVRAM isn't being stored properly then it will always say the default drivers.

See this post: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/solving-nvidia-driver-install-loading-problems.161256/