RPI 3B keeps going to blank screen (cursor showing)

BigTJ

@sdetweil
Hi,
Did you have any further thoughts on this problem?

sdetweil

@BigTJ no. not really. 2.18 is fairly old and we have upgraded electron in each of the last releases

I would use my upgrade script, see
https://github.com/sdetweil/MagicMirror_scripts

it will complain about package.json as we made the disable-gpu change

so restore it first, before running the upgrade

cd ~/MagicMirror 
git checkout package.json

there is a new way to disable gpu use without editing that package.json file

edit the ~/MagicMirror/installers/mm.sh

and add

export ELECTRON_DISABLE_GPU

before the npm start line

BigTJ

@sdetweil
I’ll give that a go in the next few days.
Thanks

BKeyport

@sdetweil Course, now begs the question… “What if there’s no npm start line?”

run-start.sh is used. :)

sdetweil

@BKeyport do it the same. run-start does npm run server

but at that point, there is no electron…

BigTJ

@sdetweil
Thanks for all your efforts and assistance. After many reloads of the OS and the MM software I still have the same issue. After searching for similar Pi problems outside of MM it appears that this can happen due to hardware failure. I am now going to purchase a new pi and start from the beginning. Will report back on success or failure in due course. Thanks to everyone that has offered help and assistance.

BigTJ

costascontis

i have the same “problem” i think…New installation mirror works just fine for hours or even a day or two,then black screen with cursor.No network,so i cant restart it properly.I did disable gpu so no error massage anymore and i did the " npm init -y" thing inside every module folder.No solution yet…

BigTJ

Finally resolved my black screen issue!
After replacing the Pi 3B, the SD card, the OS, using the latest MM software, much internet searching and a great deal of help through this forum it appears the problem is being caused by the jpg photos being added to the wallpaper module. Changing the photos from large tif files into jpg files using Adobe lightroom creates a highly compressed jpg file that the wallpaper module cannot deal with properly.
Reducing the resolution of the files during the conversion seems to create a less compressed jpg file that the Wallpaper module can deal with.
Hope this helps others with the same issue.

sdetweil

@BigTJ very cool detective work! glad you found a resolution!!