D. R. Evans composed on 2026-07-22 09:34 (UTC-0600):

Does anyone know what I might need to do in order to get past the "loading initramfs" step?

Not exactly. Boot to multi-user using cmdline option nomodeset if necessary, then
start by purging every .deb that is NVidia related, then look into the /etc/X11/
tree for any .conf file containing anything related to NVidia, and remove such file(s). Do similar with /etc/mod*/, excising anything resembling NVidia. Finish
up by rebuilding your initrd(s) to clean them of NVidia debris, and shutting down
to put the AMD GPU back in. The AMD shouldn't need any .conf files in /etc/X11/.
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--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

I had naively thought that simply putting in an AMD card -- especially
a model that I'd already used successfully in a different machine -- was pretty much guaranteed to work; but obviously I was wrong.

Any chance you simply have `firmware-amd-graphics` installed in one
machine but not in the other?


=== Stefan

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Two questions:

1) is there some random "magic" on the kernel command line (something needed specificly for the old nvidia card)? If so, that that "magic" is likely breaking things with the nvidia card "missing".

2) is the "server" trying to come up with a graphical login?

It is almost always a bad idea for a server to every come up with a graphical login. I consider having any machine coming up in a graphical login is going
to be problematical at some point. And anytime you do some sort of hardware change is good time for problems. Before you swap the new video card into the "server", change its target server to NOT be the graphical login, *before* you shut it down. And also before shutting it down clean any extra stuff on the command like and remove the quiet and splash options off of the kernel command line (if any). This will make the boot up "verbose". If it is going to crash or hang, you will know what was the last thing the kernel had to say.

At Wed, 22 Jul 2026 09:34:01 -0600 "D. R. Evans" <doc.evans@gmail.com> wrote:

Last week on my main desktop machine I swapped out an old nvidia card for which the nouveau driver was giving me trouble, and replaced it with an AMD-based RX550 video card. Everything worked great.

So I did the same on my main server for the house, whose (different) old nvidia card was also giving problems (but different problems). I bought another, identical, ARX550 card. I figured the replacement operation would all
go as well as the prior exchange had done. But nope. With the AMD card in place, at boot time the server's GRUB finds the grub.cfg file and then finds the kernel and starts to boot. Lovely. I get the usual message about loading initramfs ... and then nothing further ever happens. The disk light shows activity for a while, but nothing ever changes on the screen to show the system actually booting.

I had naively thought that simply putting in an AMD card -- especially a model
that I'd already used successfully in a different machine -- was pretty much guaranteed to work; but obviously I was wrong.

Does anyone know what I might need to do in order to get past the "loading initramfs" step?

On the server machine, I have put everything back the way it was (i.e., it now
has the old nvidia card again) which means that the home LAN is up and running
again and enables me to send this e-mail out.

I know this e-mail is light on details, but I'm not sure what additional info
would be useful.

Oh, both the server and the desktop are running up-to-date trixie.

Doc

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--- PyGate Linux v1.5.18
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

I simply had no idea that out-of-the-box debian stable needed anything additional (and, in particular, non-free) in order to use an AMD-based card.

Yes, it's a shame. IIRC Nvidia is actually better in this respect in
that you don't need any blob or proprietary code for the bare-minimum
needs of configuring the HDMI output. ?


=== Stefan

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)