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Quadro RTX 6000 / Dell Precision 7920: black screen after Metal activation, same errors as #75, BAR1 256 MB with Above 4G enabled

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
macos, rust
Domain
backend

Research direction

Start by comparing this reproduction with issue #75 and inspect the attached diagnosis-key-events.txt alongside the captured unified log events. The report identifies BAR1 size, driver version 1.3.0, and shader reflection and display-pipe failures, but does not identify relevant source files or tests. Determine whether a newer driver or larger BAR1 changes the outcome; done means the cause and a reproducible path to a working desktop display are established.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

This may be related to #75. I am reporting an independent reproduction on a Quadro RTX 6000, with Above 4G Decoding already enabled.

Hardware and software:

  • Dell Precision 7920 Tower, BIOS 2.50.0
  • Dual Intel Xeon Gold 5222
  • NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000, Turing, 24 GB VRAM
  • PCI ID 10DE:1E30, subsystem 10DE:12BA
  • VBIOS 90.02.30.00.02
  • macOS Sequoia 15.7.8
  • NullMoth driver 1.3.0, installed using 1401
  • UEFI boot, CSM disabled
  • Above 4G Decoding enabled
  • Actual BAR1 remains 256 MB

Reproduction:
macOS installation completed, and I could reach the desktop before installing the NVIDIA driver. After installing the driver and rebooting, it waits approximately 100 seconds before taking over the display. The screen then becomes black and does not recover after approximately five minutes.

The captured unified logs show:

NVRM-fb: BAR1 metadata: 256 MB at 0xB0000000; normal surface budget 192 MB
WindowServer: Metal compositor activated.
NullMoth: item 7: surface 1 plane 0: family VRAM import refused (-1000072003) - private image + copies
WindowServer: [ERROR] - Attempting to get capabilities from plane with no gamma
NullMoth: reflection: GPUPass has no AIR — cannot be reflected
NullMoth: reflection: ViewportToNDC has no AIR — cannot be reflected
WindowServer: [ERROR] - Fallback GPU Display Pipe transaction submission failed

WindowServer continued logging during the captured five-minute interval.

Additional diagnostic test:
Two monitors remained physically connected. I tested nvfbheads=1, nvhwvbl=0 and nvhud=1. The driver displayed its color-grid/HUD diagnostic image, but a normal desktop was not visible. This demonstrates diagnostic scanout, not successful desktop rendering.

The latest diagnostic boot used:
-v debug=0x100 keepsyms=1 amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1 amfi=0x80 npci=0x2000 pci_log=0x200 pci_log_mode=2 nvfb=1 nvaccel=1 -nvkmsnosmooth nvfbheads=1 nvhwvbl=0 nvhud=1

Questions:

  1. Does this appear to be the same failure as #75?
  2. Is the desktop display path expected to work with a 256 MB BAR1 on this card, or is a larger BAR1 required?
  3. Is there a workaround for the shader-reflection / display-pipe failure, or additional diagnostic data I should collect?

These results are from 1.3.0. I have not yet tested 1.8.0.

diagnosis-key-events.txt

Dominant language
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