Console output going to vga port instead of nvidia card

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Hope someone can help.

I have a RHEL 7.3 system with an nvidia quadro card using the 375.XX drivers. The motherboard also has an internal VGA device (ASPEED Graphics Family).

I cannot disable the VGA port in bios, only set priority for offboard Vs Onboard (Supermicro bios). I can get graphics to work, but when I switch to Virtual Terminals of non-graphical modes( multi-user.target), the consoles are only output on the vga port.

I have tried various combinations of kernel options to try and force the output to the nvidia board with no success. (rd.driver.blacklist=ast rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau vga=normal video=vesa:off)

Any suggestions on how to stop the system from seeing the vga board at all?

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Is this a system with UEFI firmware? In that case, the console driver is not VESA, but (U)EFI VGA: if only the internal VGA has UEFI firmware support, that would explain what you're seeing.

In theory, the UEFI firmware would control where the console appears using UEFI variables ConIn, ConOut and ErrOut: all the possible values should be listed in UEFI variables ConInDev, ConOutDev and ErrOutDev. However, there does not seem to be a tool available yet for manipulating the values of those variables. And if the firmware doesn't include a built-in way to change them (e.g. in the BIOS configuration screens), changing the variables from within the OS might have unpredictable effects.

You really should send this question to your hardware vendor for best results.

It's not UEFI at the moment.

That said, I was able to find a solution: blacklist the vga driver, then add the following to the linux16 line in the grub2 config file: "vga=normal rd.driver.blacklist=ast rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau nouveau.modeset=0 video=vesa:off"

Seems the combination of the above pushes everything out to the nvidia card. Could probably do without the nouveau blacklisting though...

If you're using the proprietary NVidia driver, then I think blacklisting the nouveau driver is a requirement; otherwise the two drivers would race each other for the control of the NVidia hardware.

If nouveau is blacklisted, you probably won't need the "nouveau.modeset=0" option at all.

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