I have just swapped out my server hardware from a regular PC with an HBA card to a Dell Poweredge R740 Server.

 

I have swapped the HBA card over and the Boot Flash USB and the server starts up and runs - So Far So Good.

 

The Problem is that on starting up the server hardware, I initially get video on the attached monitor, and I choose the Start with GUI option.

 

The Server starts up but the video goes blank when the GUI starts. The Video is live, so the monitor is receiving something.

 

Remote access works and all services are running fine, just the GUI local to the server not working.

 

It is specific to unraid as If I boot the server into another OS the monitor is working there... (I'm considering possibly using Proxmox in the future to virtualise unraid, but for now running unraid on the bare metal, proxmox boots and gives me the usual login screen available.)

 

I have seen there is a couple of threads here about similar issues, but I'm not certain they are the same - they mention turning opff fast boot, but I do not seem to see that as an option on this Dell BIOS.

 

Any ideas?

 

Diagnostics Attached

 

tower-diagnostics-20250317-1155.zip

The local GUI is typically only used for an emergency, you would normally access the WebGUI over the LAN, but you can try blacklist the GPU to see if it helps:

 

 

 

echo "blacklist mgag200" > /boot/config/modprobe.d/mgag200.conf

 

Then reboot and retest.

Just tried this and still the same, no video on the attached monitor, but server is up and running, and I can connect via Web Browser.

 

I realise that I can mostly manage the server via Browser, but there are occasions that I could do with accessing the physical monitor...

 

And via IPMI is the same, still no output?

Not sure entirely what you mean here,  I think that means to use the built in iDRAC?

 

Using iDRAC, I can see the state of the machine, and force restarts etc, but I cannot get any video output from the iDRAC console from unraid.

 

 

You should be, at least, the same output you see on the monitor before it loses the image.

It completely matches what happens on the physical monitor, I get the initial booting into gui, and the scrolling text thereafter, followed by going blank when the gui loads.

That's expected, but worth a try, if blacklisting the driver doesn't work, I don't have other ideas, but like mentioned, local GUI is really not needed regularly, you can still have local CLI access for an emergency if you boot in normal mode, and if the local GUI works, it should also work over LAN, unless there's no LAN connectivity

Ok, I'll live with it.... Not the end of the world.