It's not every day that the solution to a long-standing mild frustration with a server is to blacklist the kernel module for video drivers.

5 years of never having an accessible console on that box was not the "headless" I had in mind all this time. I was finally able to solve the black screen by forcefully ignoring Intel's broken video drivers. Thanks Intel.

I somewhat know your pain. I didn't have as complex issues with their drivers, but they did cause my work loan machine to just constantly die (no BSOD) when watching video or listening to music. Found that one lone soul online with the same issue so I just removed them.

It's a shame really, because the box has literally been rock solid since the day it was built. I was annoyed at the time that the console never worked but I could remote in via SSH on the first boot.

One day it didn't boot up and I thought it had suffered a hardware failure. I migrated everything to a new box and moved on. For kicks, I dragged the old one back out and gave it a fresh go with newer versions, fresh kernel and everything. Amazingly, it worked a treat but still no console...

(queue rant, subsequent fix)

With a completely working install complete with console, I tried booting up the original install from the old drive, turns out it didn't die at all. One of the dead external USB devices in fstab was hanging the boot waiting for me to "Press C to continue". 😒 But, without a console it was hard to tell.