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I am running Debian 10 with an i7 4770K and two GTX 780TI. My monitors are on HDMI, DVI, and DVI. All 1080p60.

If I connect all my displays to my GPU then my PC will POST and go to GRUB like normal, but once I hit enter on GRUB I just get a blinking white cursor and nothing happens. If I connect my HDMI display to the integrated GPU via the motherboard ports (while leaving my DVI displays on the GPU) then I see POST, GRUB, and then the typical Linux command line boot text scroll past for 10-15 seconds then a black screen. At this point I have to unplug my HDMI monitor from my motherboard and plug it into my GPU and I will see the login screen where I can login and use the OS like normal. The only exception being that if I try to access another virtual terminal (ctrl-alt-F3, F4, etc.) I get a black screen. But if I unplug my HDMI monitor from the GPU and plug it into the motherboard then I see the virtual terminal and can use it.

I am genuinely confused by this and not sure what to do.

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  • It might help if you explain what you expect to happen (do you expect GUI login on the monitor plugged into the MB connection?) because someone might then be able to help you with configuration to achieve that goal. I'm not sure that what is happening is unexpected; it looks like the GUI is being sent to your GPU while the VTs are active on the MB graphics. Commented Aug 15, 2021 at 18:34

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The system firmware apparently checks which GPU has at least one display connected, and that covers POST and GRUB. But once the kernel starts up, it initializes its console display by default on the first GPU it finds... which in your case is the Intel iGPU.

The X11 display server is apparently configured to use Nvidia GPUs only, which suggests you're probably using the proprietary nvidia driver instead of the open-source nouveau one.

You could get the kernel text console display to your first Nvidia GPU by blacklisting the i915 Intel iGPU driver and making sure the blacklisting is also included in your initramfs file.

Basically:

echo "blacklist i915" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/custom-blacklist.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u
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  • Thanks! That did the trick nicely. Commented Aug 14, 2021 at 1:36

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