[Linux] Black Screen After Reboot When Installing NVIDIA Driver on Rocky Linux 10 / RHEL (Wayland Enabled)

[Linux] Black Screen After Reboot When Installing NVIDIA Driver on Rocky Linux 10 / RHEL (Wayland Enabled)

Environment

  • Operating System

    • Rocky Linux 10

    • RHEL 9.4+ / 10

    • Other RHEL-based distributions with Wayland enabled by default

  • GPU

    • NVIDIA GPUs 

  • Display Server

    • Wayland (default)

    • GDM display manager

Issue

After installing the NVIDIA driver (either directly or via graid-pre-installer) and rebooting the system, the host boots into a black screen with no graphical output.

Observed Symptoms

  • ❌ No graphical login screen is displayed

  • ✅ TTY console (Ctrl + Alt + F2 ~ F6) is accessible

  • ✅ System services are running normally

  • ✅ SSH access usually works

Root Cause

Starting from Rocky Linux 10 and newer RHEL-based distributions, Wayland is enabled by default.

However, the NVIDIA proprietary driver requires DRM Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) to be explicitly enabled to work correctly with Wayland.

If nvidia-drm.modeset=1 is not enabled, the NVIDIA driver fails to properly initialize the display stack, resulting in a black screen after reboot.

Resolution

Enable NVIDIA DRM modeset by adding the kernel parameters
nvidia-drm.modeset=1 to all installed kernels.

Steps (Rocky Linux 10)

  1. Switch to a console (if available) or connect via SSH

  2. Run the following command:

Quotesudo grubby --update-kernel=ALL --args="nvidia-drm.modeset=1"

  1. Reboot the system:

sudo reboot

Verification

After reboot, verify that the kernel parameter is applied:

Quotecat /proc/cmdline | grep nvidia-drm.modeset

Expected output:

Quote
nvidia-drm.modeset=1

You can also confirm that the NVIDIA DRM module is loaded:

Quote
lsmod | grep nvidia_drm

Additional Notes


  • This issue affects both standalone NVIDIA driver installations and installations performed via graid-pre-installer


  • The problem is not specific to SupremeRAID, but SupremeRAID environments frequently encounter it because NVIDIA GPUs are mandatory


  • Enabling nvidia-drm.modeset=1 is mandatory for Wayland support with the NVIDIA proprietary driver


  • No changes to the GDM or Wayland configuration are required once DRM modeset is enabled