Boot stuck at "Loading Initial Ramdisk" or Black Screen

Issues & Assistance Newbies
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Issue Overview

I have been struggling to boot into Garuda Linux on my laptop for many days. I have an Acer Nitro 5 with an NVIDIA RTX 3050 Mobile GPU and Intel i5-10300H CPU. I have tried both live booting from a 32 GB 2.1 USB and booting from a 512 GB Internal M.2 SSD.

Boot Result

I am able to access the “Welcome to Garuda” Screen where I am given the following options:

  • Boot with open source drivers
  • Boot allowing proprietary drivers (NVIDIA)
    With the Live USB, the only thing I see afterwards is a black screen regardless of which boot option I select. I have left the computer for hours, but it never changes.
    With the Internal M.2 SSD, 2 lines are printed to the screen. The last line before it freezes is “Loading Initial Ramdisk”. Once again, I have left the computer alone for hours and nothing changes.

What I’ve Tried

Using [E], I can edit the boot options found on the “Welcome to Garuda” screen. I tried modifying the bash scripts based on other forum posts (and Chat GPT when I became desperate), but no luck. It does seem like the Initial Ramdisk does load successfully. I added an echo statement to the last line of the boot script (bash), and it printed successfully, so I believe it is freezing somewhere else.

On the Arch Forum, someone suggested booting to OS as a Chroot environment. However, I cannot seem to execute any command that requires Sudo Permissions within the Boot bash script. (This really surprised me, perhaps I am doing something wrong).

I tested the Live Boot USB on my other laptop, an ROG Zephyrus G14 with an AMD GPU and CPU, and it worked perfectly. This is how I managed to flash Garuda to my 512 GB M.2 SSD, which also worked fine on the ROG laptop.

I also tested Endeavor OS on my Nitro 5 laptop, which also seems to function perfectly. I expected it and Garuda to behave similarly, as they were flashed and booted from using an almost identical process. Although Endeavor is an option, I definitely prefer the look and feel of Garuda.

Apologies

I am sorry if this post is in the incorrect topic, missing crucial information, or includes too much information. I am happy to add info or modify the post’s format to increase the likelihood of getting my issue resolved. (I am SO tired of Windows and Garuda seems like a perfect alternative for me.)

I also apologize for not including the ‘garuda-inxi’ output. Despite looking at other forum posts, I cannot seem to figure out where to find it.

Thank you in advance for any help provided

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Please, post full ISO name, where you download, did you check shasum?

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Download Info

ISO Name: garuda-dr460nized-gaming-linux-zen-240428.iso
Download: Garuda Linux | Download:

  • I selected the “KDE Dragonized Gaming Edition” from this page

Checksums

If I recall correctly, I believe I used qBittorrent to speed up the download speed for the ISO, if that matters.
Contents of Checksum File that was downloaded with ISO:

  • 5a62e170550e7403c45879d12f28cbb93660d113f4f8991a63bb06d568d51bd6 garuda-dr460nized-gaming-linux-zen-240428.iso

Checksum of ISO downloaded:
Retrieved using the following command in Windows Command Line:
certutil -hashfile “C:\path\to\file.iso” SHA256

  • 5a62e170550e7403c45879d12f28cbb93660d113f4f8991a63bb06d568d51bd6
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Are you able to switch to a TTY at this point? I am wondering if you can log in to the TTY, then manually kick off the session (startx).

See also this topic (it could be a GPU issue): Computer doesn’t boot, boots to a black screen, or stops at a message

That is interesting. If I had to guess why Endeavour works and Garuda does not, my guess would be the different kernel in use.

1 Like
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Yes i had the same problem as you with my rtx4080, it is nvidia problem.

Steps i took
Clean install on open source drivers!
at welcome update, and install the nvidia drivers. This is important also install linux-lts kernel when you are given the option to install various software after the update is done. The extra kernel is a safe guard when the zen kernel, which is a much more updated version, than the linux-lts kernel, so if the zen kernel fails you still have the linux-lts kernel to boot your system.

DO NOT REBOOT

Now open a terminal
and run the following lines one by one;
#Because the following script allows you to rerun the commands below, but make sure to delete the nvidia-all folder before downloading the first line again. Use this command rmdir $HOME"/nvidea-all"

git clone https://github.com/Frogging-Family/nvidia-all.git
cd nvidia-all
makepkg -si

#you can choose open source as well as proprietary drivers, from lowest available to highest available versions. Do choose to compile dkms otherwise you cannot switch your kernels!

sudo dracut-rebuild
sudo update-grub
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Try the other KDE version or the LTS version I uploaded .
Use forum search, please.

3 Likes
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Hello and thanks for those details.

I ran into the same issue with my 4080 and I was unable to properly boot my Garuda (KDE Dragonized Gaming Edition) since my fresh install.
I needed to boot in rescue mode to do the dracut-rebuild command then I was able to boot again normally. But after each shutdown I was stuck at “Loading Initial Ramdisk” again.

So thanks @Jeshu you helped me! And for reference, I also had to install linux-zen-headers as it appears it wasn’t on my system for a reason.
Also, I needed to unmout /boot/efi before doing the makepkg command if it can helps someone.
The main difference here is that I tried to fix my existing install instead of going from scratch.

Since then, my OS seems to boot correctly!

1 Like
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Good to hear the solution helped you. :person_raising_hand:

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