After the MicroOS update tonight, I lost my graphical login. So far I haven’t been able to reinstate it. My system shows no failed services, in particular graphical.target and gdm.service have started up successfully.
poseidon:/etc/gdm # systemctl status display-manager.service
● gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/gdm.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Sun 2025-09-28 11:50:53 CEST; 24min ago
Invocation: 0d31402813f34497aa7713515c2d56de
Process: 2098 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/gdm/keytable (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 2101 (gdm)
Tasks: 5 (limit: 36644)
CPU: 41ms
CGroup: /system.slice/gdm.service
└─2101 /usr/sbin/gdm
Sep 28 11:50:53 poseidon systemd[1]: Starting GNOME Display Manager...
Sep 28 11:50:53 poseidon keytable[2098]: /etc/vconsole.conf available
Sep 28 11:50:53 poseidon keytable[2098]: XKBLAYOUT: de
Sep 28 11:50:53 poseidon keytable[2098]: XKBLAYOUT is already set. Better don't touch X11 keyboard configuration.
Sep 28 11:50:53 poseidon systemd[1]: Started GNOME Display Manager.
I should add that I still had display-manager-legacy.service until this morning. I found this forum article explaining that I should use gdm-systemd and gdm.service instead. I did so, but still there’s no graphical session.
I guess that somehow the UI session of user “gdm” should be started, but this doesn’t happen and I’m clueless what I need to do to make it happen.
It’s a MIcroOS installation, initially set up ~6 months ago, and fully up-to-date. The list of installed patterns is: base, container_runtime, gnome_basic, microos_base, microos_base_zypper, microos_hardware, microos_selinux, microos_sssd_ldap, minimal_base, x11, x86_64_v3. “gnome” is missing in this list, but I verified that intalling the “gnome” pattern would add just 51 bytes to my system.
The proposed solution (adding systemd in nsswitch.conf) doesn’t work for me. Actually it makes matters worse because gdm now starts to dump core. I suppose the “problem” is that I am ussing sssd:
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Started GNOME Display Manager.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Created slice User Slice of UID 60578.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Starting User Runtime Directory /run/user/60578...
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd-logind[1999]: New session c36 of user gdm-greeter.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Finished User Runtime Directory /run/user/60578.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Starting User Manager for UID 60578...
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon (systemd)[5466]: pam_sss(systemd-user:account): Access denied for user gdm-greeter: 10 (User not known to the underlying authentication module)
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon (systemd)[5466]: PAM failed: User not known to the underlying authentication module
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon (systemd)[5466]: user@60578.service: Failed to set up PAM session: Operation not permitted
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon (systemd)[5466]: user@60578.service: Failed at step PAM spawning /usr/lib/systemd/systemd: Operation not permitted
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: user@60578.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=224/PAM
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: user@60578.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Failed to start User Manager for UID 60578.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd[1]: Started Session c36 of User gdm-greeter.
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon gdm-launch-environment][5459]: pam_unix(gdm-launch-environment:session): session opened for user gdm-greeter(uid=60578) by (uid=0)
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon /usr/libexec/gdm/gdm-wayland-session[5472]: dbus-daemon[5472]: [session uid=60578 pid=5472] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.systemd1' reque>
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon /usr/libexec/gdm/gdm-wayland-session[5472]: dbus-daemon[5472]: [session uid=60578 pid=5472] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.systemd1' failed: Pro>
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon gnome-session-i[5476]: Failed to upload environment to systemd: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd>
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon gnome-session-i[5476]: Failed to check if unit gnome-session-wayland@gnome-login.target is active: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoO>
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon gnome-session-i[5476]: Failed to reset failed state of units: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "org.freedesktop.systemd1">
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon gnome-session-i[5476]: Starting GNOME session target: gnome-session-wayland@gnome-login.target
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon gnome-session-i[5476]: Failed to start unit gnome-session-wayland@gnome-login.target: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner: Name "o>
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon kernel: show_signal: 3 callbacks suppressed
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon kernel: traps: gnome-session-i[5476] trap int3 ip:7fbf102351eb sp:7ffc0bf846d0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8600.0[6b1eb,7fbf101ed000+a0000]
Sep 28 12:45:03 poseidon systemd-coredump[5484]: Process 5476 (gnome-session-i) of user 60578 terminated abnormally with signal 5/TRAP, processing...
Hi there.
I just make an account just to tell You how i solve my issue today in Arch.
For first what happend?
Turn on pc > bios ok > grub ok > in like 5 sec schould have login screen here but i have only cursor on screen that blinks like ~20 times > screen blinks for one sec. and againn cursor blinking to the end of times.
I can login to tty so nevermind what i check and try etc. 4 fu&^% hours from life, but i found out old file in /etc/gdm/custom.conf that i prabobly created when i try to have login prompt on all my monitors not just on main one, nevermind, i comment line with WaylandEnable=false
reboot
profit…
IDK what this is common with last update crash and dumpcore in dgm, but still worked for me.
Gnome 49, more specifically gdm, is Wayland-only, so if you have disabled Wayland by any means you cannot get a graphical login…
But I doubt that this is the problem with the OP.
For be precise
i have WaylandEnable=false
and changed to #WaylandEnable=false
When i made changes and tests i always made hard reboot, not only services, if not work i changed all back and again and again so this was last change in files that i made and after reboot loginscreen apear and system is working like before.
I checked journalctl -b and previous dumpCore errors are gone.
Idk if it help in Yours cases, but still it’s worth trying.
I wonder if anyone has had this issue persist after these changes? I’ve just had the update today and can’t get gdm to show.
After the recommendations of a number of threads, I have tried:
a) Copying /usr/lib/pam.d/systemd-user to /etc/pam.d/systemd-user:
/etc/pam.d/systemd-user:
# This file is part of systemd.
#
# Used by systemd --user instances.
# Override the default behavior of the "auth" PAM stack and don't throw a
# warning each time a user instance is started, which is the default behavior of
# the PAM stack when no auth is defined. Indeed PID1 calls pam_setcred() when
# the user instance is about to be started to allow some user services, such as
# gnome-terminal, to extend theirs credentials similar to the ones received by a
# user when he logs in (and the full PAM authentication stack is run). For some
# details, see:
#
# https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm/-/issues/393
# https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/11198
# https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1190515
#
auth required pam_deny.so
#account include common-account
account required pam_unix.so no_pass_expiry
session required pam_selinux.so close
session required pam_selinux.so nottys open
session required pam_loginuid.so
session optional pam_keyinit.so force revoke
session include common-session
b) checking my nsswitch (which has always had systemd present):
# This file is part of systemd.
#
# Used by systemd --user instances.
# Override the default behavior of the "auth" PAM stack and don't throw a
# warning each time a user instance is started, which is the default behavior of
# the PAM stack when no auth is defined. Indeed PID1 calls pam_setcred() when
# the user instance is about to be started to allow some user services, such as
# gnome-terminal, to extend theirs credentials similar to the ones received by a
# user when he logs in (and the full PAM authentication stack is run). For some
# details, see:
#
# https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm/-/issues/393
# https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/11198
# https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1190515
#
auth required pam_deny.so
#account include common-account
account required pam_unix.so no_pass_expiry
session required pam_selinux.so close
session required pam_selinux.so nottys open
session required pam_loginuid.so
session optional pam_keyinit.so force revoke
session include common-session
Seemingly no pam_unit.so, and grep’ing shows nothing referring to it in either /etc/pam.d or /usr/lib/pam.d. I’m not an expert at pam, so please let me know if there is another place I should check as well!
I have rebooted and tested a lot of configurations at this point (reverting back after each failure!).
It should be noted that I am a Slowroll user – I’ve heard that there are some issues with it at the moment, so as a last-ditch attempt to fix this I have switched to Tumbleweed. Somehow, that does seem to have fixed the issue, at least for now.
I believe it was only just released, along with a new kernel version. That is based solely on me noticing the icon that Gnome now uses for the VPN connection changing, as I checked what changed in my snapper snapshots and found only kernel updates but no gnome updates listed (however I don’t store many snapshots due to disk space limits).
Confirmed, Slowroll has gdm-49. But it comes with a slowroll-specific change that avoids use of systemd’s dynamic user feature. So the discussion in this thread does not apply to slowroll.