Gnome login screen lost on Slowroll - reinstall with zypper?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I am writing this from Leap 15.6 in dual boot installation with Slowroll on my Aorus workstation, because booting my long time Slowroll now provides only logon from a black console screen with tiny text. After login, I can get startx working, but not Gnome. (Another issue on this hardware is that the USB DVD installer cause kernel panic - out of memory, so I can’t use it to reinstall the Gnome desktop, and yes this USB boots fine on another, MSI workstation).

So I am asking for

  1. Configuration steps to try to get GDM/Gnome running and keeping my current profile settings if possible?

  2. Using zypper to reinstall the Gnome desktop and GDM login keeping my profile settings if possible?

This is output from Slowroll a couple of days before the Gnome/GDM issue:

inxi -dFGSz
System:
Kernel: 6.18.43-1-longterm arch: x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: GNOME v: 50.4 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed-Slowroll 20260802
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Gigabyte product: Z790 AORUS ELITE AX v: N/A
serial:
Mobo: Gigabyte model: Z790 AORUS ELITE AX v: x.x
serial: Firmware: UEFI vendor: American Megatrends LLC.
v: FF date: 08/28/2023
CPU:
Info: 12-core (8-mt/4-st) model: 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700KF bits: 64
type: MST AMCP cache: L2: 12 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 800/4900:5000:3800 cores: 1: 800 2: 800
3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 800 9: 800 10: 800 11: 800 12: 800
13: 800 14: 800 15: 800 16: 800 17: 800 18: 800 19: 800 20: 800
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel DG2 [Arc A750] driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Microdia Camera driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo type: USB
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.24 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.13
compositor: gnome-shell driver: X: loaded: modesetting unloaded: vesa
dri: iris gpu: i915 resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: intel mesa v: 26.1.6 renderer: Mesa Intel Arc
A750 Graphics (DG2)
API: Vulkan v: 1.4.357 drivers: intel,llvmpipe surfaces: N/A
API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
Info: Tools: api: glxinfo,vulkaninfo gpu: gputop, intel_gpu_top, lsgpu
x11: xprop,xrandr

2

After login via tty, could you please provide the output of sudo systemctl status display-manager and sudo dmsg | grep sddm-helper?

3

Please post output as pre-formatted text, the </> in the editor.

4 
sudo systemctl status display-manager
Unit display-manager.service could not be found

sudo dmesg | grep sddm-helper
(no output)
5

Sorry, my fault, you are using GNOME. What’s the output of sudo systemctl status gdm.service?

6 
Unit gdm.service could not be found
7

Please show:
sudo systemctl status display-manager-legacy.service

My guess is that the gdm service does exist, but has not been enabled nor set to be active instead of display-manager-legacy.service

1 Like
8 
sudo systemctl status display-manager-legacy.service
* display-manager-legacy.service - X Display Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/display-manager-legacy.service;disabled;preset:enabled)
  Active: inactive (dead)

Yeah, thanks. This helped me to get the desktop started again using

 sudo systemctl start display-manager-legacy.service

After logout the GDM login menu is there, but after reboot it isn’t.

So the remaining question is how to enable this login service to run the GDM login menu after each startup?

Background:
With reference to my previous post " Accessibility setting lost on Gnome login screen"
I attempted with AI assistance to make the GDM login screen persist the Accessibility “Large Text” setting across reboots on an openSUSE Slowroll system. To achieve this, we applied a custom dconf configuration targeting the org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor.

9

When you start a service, it just starts running until it finishes (in your case by a shutdown?)
When you want a service to be started at boot, you should enable it.

10

display-manager-legacy.service is for old X11 installs, you should be using wayland with Gnome 50 on Slowroll, so he right thing to do should be:

systemctl enable display.manager

reboot (or start the service) and then you should see something like:

LT-B:~ # systemctl status display-manager
● gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service.d
             └─10-switch-to-vt1-on-stop.conf
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2026-08-28 09:49:30 CEST; 5h 32min ago
 Invocation: c2ba254149f1434eac7a0d5e93b2af1a
    Process: 1199 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/gdm/keytable (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 1211 (gdm)
      Tasks: 5 (limit: 18908)
        CPU: 414ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/gdm.service
             └─1211 /usr/sbin/gdm
11

The issue is completely resolved now! Installing the ‘gdm-systemd’ package fixed the missing service links, and after running ‘systemctl enable gdm.service’ and setting the graphical target, GDM boots perfectly on every restart. Thanks for the help!
(There was a minor typo in the command (dot instead of hyphen).

sudo zypper in -f gdm-systemd
sudo systemctl enable gdm.service
sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target