Only mouse cursor on black screen when GDM should load

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi

I’m running openSUSE 42.3, with gnome on my laptop. Yesterday I had a glitch in a gnome extension, I tried to restart gnome using Alt+F2, but this freezed gnome.
I forced shutdown my PC (using the power button). When I started my laptop it boots correctly but instead of GDM I only get a black screen with a mouse cursor.

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad x250, with integrated intel graphics (no amd/nvidia).

I tried booting into an old kernel, reinstalling packages reported by rpm -Va, reinstalling gnome and moving my removing my .gnome files from my home directory, but nothing helps.

Here is the output for journalctl -u display-manager:

-- Logs begin at Tue 2018-05-22 14:53:21 CEST, end at Wed 2018-05-23 08:12:20 CEST. --
May 23 08:02:41 tobia-laptop.local systemd[1]: Starting X Display Manager...
May 23 08:02:41 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: /etc/vconsole.conf available
May 23 08:02:41 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: KEYMAP: uk
May 23 08:02:41 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: Command: localectl set-keymap uk
May 23 08:02:41 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: I: Using systemd /usr/share/systemd/kbd-model-map mapping
May 23 08:02:42 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: Starting service lightdm..done
May 23 08:02:42 tobia-laptop.local systemd[1]: Started X Display Manager.
May 23 08:02:42 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: (lightdm:3116): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
May 23 08:02:42 tobia-laptop.local display-manager[2884]: (lightdm:3116): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
May 23 08:02:42 tobia-laptop.local lightdm[4358]: pam_unix(lightdm-autologin:session): session opened for user tobia by (uid=0)

And my /var/log/Xorg.0.log file can be found here: https://transfer.sh/WyBtB/Xorg.0.log

I can provide my full journal, but it seems to contain some sensitive values.

Do you have an idea what’s wrong, or how I can debug this?

Thanks in advance!

2

Hi, apparently you are running lightdm, not GDM at the moment. Since Gnome is dependent on GDM, no wonder you are left with a black screen…
Check /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager by logging in via a console (CTRL+ALT+F3 should do it, for instance), it should read as in the following:


bruno@LT_B:~> cat /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager
## Path:        Desktop/Display manager
## Type:        string(Xorg)
## Default:     "Xorg"
#
DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER="Xorg"
## Path:    Desktop/Display manager
## Description:    settings to generate a proper displaymanager config
## Type:    string(kdm,xdm,gdm,wdm,entrance,console,lightdm,sddm)
## Default:    ""
#
# Here you can set the default Display manager (kdm/xdm/gdm/wdm/entrance/console).
# all changes in this file require a restart of the displaymanager
#
DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm"
<snip>

If not so, change the line “DISPLAYMANAGER=“lightdm”” to DISPLAYMANAGER=“gdm” with your favourite editor, then reboot.

Hope This Helps.

3

Thanks for your answer, the change to lightdm was for testing purposes, I changed it back but still the same problem.

I also tried to install the XFCE pattern and setup xfce as default using sysconfig and then xdm loads (although gdm is setup as displaymanager in sysconfig).

4

GNOME should actually work fine with lightdm, but AFAIK screen locking won’t work.

I see nothing wrong in your Xorg.0.log.

But GNOME requires working OpenGL, maybe that’s where the problem lies? (although I think you should get an “Oh no, something went wrong” error message in that case)
Please install Mesa-demo-x and post the output of this command (run in IceWM or XFCE e.g.):

glxinfo

Also, try to create a fresh user account and login to GNOME as that, to rule out a problem with some user files.
Btw, .gnome is not used anymore since years (GNOME1?) AFAIK, so deleting that won’t have any effect of course.

I also tried to install the XFCE pattern and setup xfce as default using sysconfig and then xdm loads (although gdm is setup as displaymanager in sysconfig).

There is no displaymanager called “xfce”, so it falls back to xdm if you set xfce.

5

Output is here: SUSE Paste.

Also, try to create a fresh user account and login to GNOME as that, to rule out a problem with some user files.
Btw, .gnome is not used anymore since years (GNOME1?) AFAIK, so deleting that won’t have any effect of course.

Just created a fresh account, and still the same issue. Note that GDM doesn’t show the login screen. I also removed the .gnome2, .config etc directories.

6

Hm, I see nothing wrong there either.

I don’t know much about GNOME.
But try to uninstall xf86-video-intel to use the generic modesetting driver, and/or try to uninstall drm-kmp-default which contain backported drivers from kernel 4.9 that may cause problems on some (older) intel chips.
Try all possibilities, i.e. without intel but with drm-kmp-default, with intel but without drm-kmp-default, and without both.
Maybe one combination might work for you.

Note that GDM doesn’t show the login screen.

I suppose that’s to be expected if GNOME doesn’t work, as it has similar requirements.

7

So I solved this. I have some extra repos (from software.opensuse.org) setup, and somehow a newer version of gdm was installed which is probably incompatible with the gnome version.

I know this really is a stupid mistake of me, especially since I have had this exact same issue in the past. (But of course I only remember that when I asked it here).

Thanks for your help and thanks for Leap 15.0!

8

… and, thanks to you, too, for coming back and letting us know you fixed the problem, what the cause was, and how you fixed it. Sure to help someone else at some time.:good: