Bug#1125275: mutter: Black screen on an HDMI monitor after loading Gnome Wayland session on a laptop with AMD Radeon graphics

[Nazarii Kretovych]

Hi Simon,

journalctl -b
shows lots of
січ 23 19:48:01 thinkpad gnome-shell[2301]: Page flip failed:
drmModeAtomicCommit: Invalid argument
and
січ 23 19:48:01 thinkpad gnome-shell[2301]: Cursor update failed:
drmModeAtomicCommit: Invalid argument

The back screen happens when on both internal and external (hdmi) screens.
Even if I disconnect my external monitor completely, the internal screen
will still be black after logging into Wayland session. The issue happens
on every boot.

I use the following packages:
linux-image-amd64 6.12.63-1 (trixie)
firmware-amd-graphics 20251021-1~bpo13+1 (trixie-backports) - I wonder if
this package could might the issue.
gnome-shell 48.7-0+deb13u1 (trixie)

I've attached my ~/.config/monitors.xml.

/var/lib/gdm3/.config/monitors.xml does not exist on my system.

RE downgrading packages: I will try downgrading some packages tomorrow.

On Fri, Jan 23, 2026 at 12:57 PM Simon McVittie <smcv at debian.org> wrote:

> Control: reassign -1 src:mutter,src:gnome-shell
> Control: found -1 mutter/48.7-0+deb13u1
> Control: found -1 gnome-shell/48.7-0+deb13u1
> Control: tags -1 + trixie moreinfo
> Control: forwarded -1
> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/8983
>
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2026 at 21:09:47 +0200, Nazik wrote:
> >My laptop is connected to an external monitor via HDMI. When I boot it, i
> can see GDM login screen on the internal screen, and I can see GDM's gray
> background on the external monitor.
> >All is ok here. But after I type login and password, both the external
> and internal screens are OFF, and I can't use my system. In Gnome Settings,
> I always turn off the internal screen.
>
> Please check the system log (systemd Journal) for warning messages. I
> suspect that you will see this message, and perhaps others:
>
>      Page flip failed: drmModeAtomicCommit: Invalid argument
>
> If you do, then this is the same issue as a few other regression reports
> seen after the 13.3 update. Unfortunately I don't see this regression
> myself, which is going to make it more difficult to debug.
>
> Please could you attach your ~/.config/monitors.xml and
> /var/lib/gdm3/.config/monitors.xml? (Replace serial numbers, etc. with
> **** if you would prefer, as long as it's obvious where you have
> edited.)
>
> >I also checked if the issue happens in the prev. kernel 6.12.57. It also
> happens with the older kernel. I suspect there is a bug in mutter /
> gnome-shell, but I am not 100% sure.
>
> If you use snapshot.debian.org to downgrade gnome-shell (only) to
> version 48.4-1~deb13u1 from Debian 13.2, similar to what is described in
> <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1125273#15>, does
> that work around this bug? If yes, then that would confirm that this is
> a bug in gnome-shell, and not mutter.
>
> You would probably have to downgrade the gnome-shell, gnome-shell-common
> and gnome-shell-extension-prefs packages.
>
> Or, if you downgrade only the mutter packages (mutter-common,
> gir1.2-mutter-16, libmutter-16-0 and mutter-common-bin) to version
> 48.4-2, while leaving gnome-shell at version 48.7-0+deb13u1, does *that*
> work around this bug? If yes, then that would mean it's a regression in
> mutter and not gnome-shell.
>
> You've already confirmed this is not a kernel regression, which is very
> helpful; and Mesa wasn't updated in Debian 13.3, so probably it isn't
> that either.
>
> Thanks,
>      smcv
>
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