Leap 16.0 boot process gets stuck

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I upgraded my laptop from leap 15.6 to 16.0 with the opensuse-migration-tool. That went fine and after rebooting I had a working leap 16.0 (except for an unexpected change of settings for my touchpad). After a short random check of applications, I shut down my laptop.
Upon booting again, the boot process gets stuck in an endless loop. Only switching off stops that.
I can start a read-only snapshot of leap 15.6 and in advanced settings (recovery mode) of leap 16.0 (kernel 6.4.0-150600.23.78-default.
There I extracted the recurring messages from the boot process:

type or 2025-12-06T12:43:28.148605+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper[1485]: [PAM] Starting...
2025-12-06T12:43:28.148710+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper[1485]: [PAM] Authenticating...
2025-12-06T12:43:28.148768+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper[1485]: [PAM] returning.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.154004+01:00 LatitudeW systemd-logind[1056]: New session 3 of user sddm.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.155491+01:00 LatitudeW systemd[1]: Starting User Manager for UID 461...
2025-12-06T12:43:28.179970+01:00 LatitudeW systemd-logind[1056]: New session 4 of user sddm.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.181370+01:00 LatitudeW (systemd): pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session opened for user sddm(uid=461) by sddm(uid=0)
2025-12-06T12:43:28.181512+01:00 LatitudeW (systemd): pam_kwallet5(systemd-user:session): pam_kwallet5: not a graphical session, skipping. Use force_run parameter to ignore this.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.182766+01:00 LatitudeW (systemd)[1486]: user@461.service: Failed to execute /usr/lib/systemd/systemd: Permission denied
2025-12-06T12:43:28.182864+01:00 LatitudeW (systemd)[1486]: user@461.service: Failed at step EXEC spawning /usr/lib/systemd/systemd: Permission denied
2025-12-06T12:43:28.183714+01:00 LatitudeW systemd[1]: user@461.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC
2025-12-06T12:43:28.184044+01:00 LatitudeW systemd-logind[1056]: Removed session 4.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.185792+01:00 LatitudeW systemd[1]: user@461.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.186141+01:00 LatitudeW systemd[1]: Failed to start User Manager for UID 461.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.200487+01:00 LatitudeW systemd[1]: Started Session 3 of User sddm.
2025-12-06T12:43:28.202065+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper: pam_unix(sddm-greeter:session): session opened for user sddm(uid=461) by sddm(uid=0)
2025-12-06T12:43:28.203025+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper: pam_kwallet5(sddm-greeter:session): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_open_session
2025-12-06T12:43:28.203115+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper: pam_kwallet5(sddm-greeter:session): pam_kwallet5: open_session called without kwallet5_key
2025-12-06T12:43:28.205264+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper[1485]: Writing cookie to "/tmp/xauth_hVNpwo"
2025-12-06T12:43:28.205359+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper[1485]: Starting X11 session: "" "/usr/bin/sddm-greeter-qt6 --socket /tmp/sddm-:0-KEvweE --theme /usr/share/sddm/themes/breeze-openSUSE"
2025-12-06T12:43:28.207107+01:00 LatitudeW sddm[1301]: Greeter session failed to start
2025-12-06T12:43:28.207191+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper[1485]: [PAM] Closing session
2025-12-06T12:43:28.208219+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper: pam_unix(sddm-greeter:session): session closed for user sddm
2025-12-06T12:43:28.208308+01:00 LatitudeW sddm-helper: pam_kwallet5(sddm-greeter:session): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_close_session

UID 461 is indeed SDDM.
/usr/lib/systemd/systemd is there (typed over, not copied as the laptop is now in recovery mode and I am working on another computer):

ls /usr/lib/systemd/systemd
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 121016 Jul 31 16:32 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd*

and looks just like on Leap 15.6 (except for file date, time and size).

How do I fix this?

2

Login to console and capture

ausearch -m avc -ts boot

Upload to the https://paste.opensuse.org/

3

No uploading needed, the output is

<no matches>
4

Is SELinux active?

sestatus
5

During the upgrade I switched from appArmor to SELinux, but I haven’t done anything with it.
setstatus returns

SELinux status disabled
6

Additional:

/etc/default/grub has

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nosplash quiet mitigations=auto security=selinux enforcing=1 selinux=1"

and /etc/selinux/config contains only

SELINUX = disabled

(all in recovery mode)

7

IIRC this is deprecated and may not work correctly.

Try removing them.

8

Thank you, removing the line from /etc/selinux/config and the 3 items from /ec/default/grub (followed by
grub2-mkconfig ) made the laptop boot agin in Leap 16.0.
Is there anything I need to do to prevent the problem occurring again?

9

If you do not intend to use SELinux you can just leave it as it is now.

10

OK, thank you very much for yor help!

11

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