August 2025

NUC random crash when screen is unplugged

I run an Intel NUC Gen 8 boxes (NUC8BEB, NVMe + HDD, 32 GB RAM) in my Proxmox 8 cluster (Issue is the same on PVE9).
I randomly hangs — sometimes in 15 min, sometimes after a few hours. No ping, no display, useless logs.

Root Cause

It’s likely an iGPU power management bug (Intel HD Graphics, Kaby Lake Refresh).
A random facebook post mentionned i915.enable_dc=0 disables GPU power management and should stops random hangs. I double checked and tested….

Fix

Persistent fix via GRUB:

nano /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet i915.enable_dc=0"
update-grub
reboot

Or quick test (but it’ll come back with kernel updates):

mv /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin \
   /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.disabled

Follow-up to my e1000e NIC hang post