Plasma only starts as root

Hi all,

I am still struggling with my Plasma installation (I posted here one month ago: Black screen - mouse only). I invested several hours in resolving conflicts in Yast, and I uninstalled everything X11/KDE/Plasma related I could find. After that I installed the patterns-kde-kde.

But: When I start a KDE Plasma session, the screen stays black, only showing a mouse cursor.

However, when I startx from a root session, I get a KDE desktop. I crashes every few seconds - i.e., taskbar + desktop icons freeze, disappear, then reappear - but I managed to start a Firefox and it continued running although the plasmashell (?) crashed.

Trying to do the same as my normal user => black screen + mouse.

I also created a new user (adduser), logged in on console, did startx => black screen + mouse.

Any ideas what I could try?

  1. Are you running KDE with Xorg X server or Wayland?
    If you don’t know, you can disable autologin, then when you reboot and arrive at the screen where you enter your Username/Password, there will be a dropdown somewhere (exact location depends on your Display Manager) that allows you to choose (try both).

2.Is your KDE/Plasma from the default OSS, or do you also have special KDE repos installed?
If you don’t know, post the results of the following command

sudo zypper lr -d

TSU

Startx is pretty much deprecated.
What happens if you try to login to another graphical desktop, e.g. IceWM or Openbox?

You have the Nvidia proprietary repository enabled. The only non-openSUSE signed repository that I know of that consistently keeps pace with Tumbleweed is Packman. Consider using Nouveau (but first read up on its current status with your graphics card), or Leap-15.0 if alien repositories are a must.

Thanks for your hints!

I am using DisplayManager xdm because sddm sends me directly into black screen + mouse. /etc/sddm.conf.d/autologin.conf does not exist, so autologin should be disabled, right? (actually, the whole /etc/sddm.conf.d is empty.)

As far as I can tell, xdm does not show me an option to select an Xserver or WM. Any hints on that?

I am using IceWM while writing this post. So IceWM seems to work fine.

As proposed, I disabled the nvidia repository (after uninstalling everything that looked like nvidia-drivers.) After reboot, my screen resolution is now terribly low. But apart from that IceWM is still working and sddm/KDE still is not. I think the nvidia drivers were ok because the screen showed at least something (the mouse cursor).

| Alias | Name | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service

–±-------------±-------------±--------±----------±--------±---------±-------±-----------------------------------------------------±-------
1 | NVIDIA | NVIDIA | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/tumbleweed |
2 | repo-debug | repo-debug | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/debug |
3 | repo-non-oss | repo-non-oss | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss |
4 | repo-oss | repo-oss | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss |
5 | repo-update | repo-update | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/tumbleweed/ |

Any more ideas?

Ah, sorry, my above posting of the zypper output was outdated. Here with nvidia disabled.

# | Alias        | Name         | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh
--+--------------+--------------+---------+-----------+--------
1 | NVIDIA       | NVIDIA       | No      | ----      | ----   
2 | repo-debug   | repo-debug   | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes    
3 | repo-non-oss | repo-non-oss | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes    
4 | repo-oss     | repo-oss     | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes    
5 | repo-update  | repo-update  | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes    

Post:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log

This as a attached textfile.

Also:

grep -i 'blacklist nouveau' /etc/modprobe.d/*

This in Code-Tags

PS:
startx does only works as root.

Replacing sddm with lightdm seems to be a common solution to black screens. None of my TW or Leap installations include sddm. You may need to use yast2 alternatives to make the DM change after doing the (optional sddm) package removal and (necessary lightdm) installation.

What is the output of the following in IceWM running a (root) Xterm

zypper in inxi; inxi -G -c0; lspci -nnk | grep -A3 VGA; grep onnect /var/log/Xorg.0.log

Hi again,

The Xorg.0.log seems to contain only log information of the current run; which is IceWM because I need Firefox. Should I still send this file? Or a different one like Xorg.1.log or Xorg.0.log.old?

grep -i ‘blacklist nouveau’ /etc/modprobe.d/*
=>


/etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-desktop.conf:blacklist nouveau

Should I comment out this line?

@mrmazda:
I installed lightdm and did a

update-alternatives --config displaymanager

to select it. Worked.
Tried to log in to KDE: black screen + mouse. crtl+alt+backspace, and then tried KDE (wayland): black, no mouse. ctrl+alt+bs, switch to console, etc. did not work. Pushing the power button let my notebook shutdown.

Here is the output of inxi, lspci:


 zypper in inxi; inxi -G -c0; lspci -nnk | grep -A3 VGA; grep onnect /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
'inxi' is already installed.
No update candidate for 'inxi-3.0.10-1.1.noarch'. The highest available version is already installed.
Resolving package dependencies...

Nothing to do.
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
        LANGUAGE = (unset),
        LC_ALL = (unset),
        LC_CTYPE = "de_DE.UTF-8,LANG=en_US.UTF-8",
        LANG = "de_DE.utf8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to a fallback locale ("de_DE.utf8").
Graphics:
  Card-1: NVIDIA GF106M [GeForce GTX 460M] driver: nvidia v: 390.67 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa 
  unloaded: nv,nvidia resolution: 640x480~73Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: N/A v: N/A 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GF106M [GeForce GTX 460M] [10de:0dd1] (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:1083]
        Kernel driver in use: nvidia
        Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

Hm, still nvidia…? Confused; thought I had removed it…

You have to remove the Nvidia Packages, not only to disable the Repo…

Sorry, probably stupid question, but what name could that remaining nvidia package have?


 rpm -qa --last |grep nv
plasma-nm5-openvpn-5.13.2-1.1.x86_64          Tue Jul  3 21:16:26 2018
konversation-lang-1.7.5-1.1.noarch            Tue Jul  3 21:16:00 2018
konversation-1.7.5-1.1.x86_64                 Tue Jul  3 21:15:46 2018
libKF5UnitConversion5-lang-5.47.0-1.1.noarch  Tue Jul  3 21:14:54 2018
libKF5UnitConversion5-5.47.0-1.1.x86_64       Tue Jul  3 21:14:46 2018
libdolphinvcs5-18.04.2-1.1.x86_64             Tue Jul  3 21:13:16 2018
libdouble-conversion1-32bit-2.0.1-6.2.x86_64  Fri Jun  1 19:53:45 2018
NetworkManager-openvpn-lang-1.8.4-1.1.noarch  Fri Jun  1 18:18:50 2018
NetworkManager-openvpn-1.8.4-1.1.x86_64       Fri Jun  1 18:18:28 2018
texlive-environ-2018.151.0.0.3svn33821-37.2.noarch Fri Jun  1 16:44:41 2018
openvpn-2.4.6-1.1.x86_64                      Fri Jun  1 16:35:24 2018
libv4lconvert0-1.14.1-1.1.x86_64              Fri Jun  1 16:29:38 2018
libmpeg2convert0-0.5.1-2.1.x86_64             Fri Jun  1 16:24:26 2018
libdouble-conversion1-2.0.1-6.2.x86_64        Fri Jun  1 16:17:50 2018
texlive-environ-doc-2018.151.0.0.3svn33821-37.2.noarch Fri Jun  1 16:12:15 2018

nvidia… nv is a very very old driver that probably is not included any more

Kernel driver is now using nouveau as well.
I removed the blacklist file.
The screen resolution has changed back to highres. That’s good, at least :slight_smile:


01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GF106M [GeForce GTX 460M] [10de:0dd1] (rev a1)
        Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:1083]
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

However, sadly, both KDE and KDE Wayland options in the lightdm menu still do not lead to a working KDE desktop.
For KDE, the lightdm background stays quite a while but eventually turns black. Mouse cursor is there.
For KDE Wayland, the background changes to a lightbulb with mouse cursor. But then nothing more happens.
So I would guess its not a graphics/nvidia/nouveau thing but something else.
Any ideas?

Try Xfce instead of KDE/Plasma.

At one time, I was using an older computer with Nvidia graphics. It died after Leap 42.2, so I no longer have it.

I never could get the Nvidia drivers to work. So I went back to nouveau.

But nouveau also did not work. The problem was that installing the Nvidia drivers replaces Mesa with a Nvidia version. And uninstalling the Nvidia driver did not undo that. So I reinstalled mesa. And that worked fine at least with Gnome, but KDE still had problems. It turned out that I had to force KDE to use software emulation of OpenGL. And with that, Plasma worked just fine.

My understanding is that uninstalling mesa-dri-nouveau will force software emulation. You may need to lock the package so it is not reinstalled.

My suggestion: after removing Nvidia drivers, reinstall mesa and uninstall mesa-dri-nouveau.

Sadly, it is still not working. mesa-dri-nouveau was not installed. I installed it and reinstalled all of the mesa stuff. It did not change anything. If the graphics driver really was the culprit, then why would I see the mouse cursor? Shouldn’t that be gone, too?

Xfce: Yes, I think I might try it soon as a last resort. Yet I am used to all those names and hotkeys of the KDE applications; I wouldn’t really want to change. My laptop is six years old now. Maybe I buy a new one and hope that KDE then works…

Thank you all for your ideas and hints!

If you keep KDE/Plasma installed, you can still use the KDE programs in Xfce. I do. I prefer Dolphin, KWrite, Kate, K3B, KDiskFree, KOrganizer, Kdenlive, KRename, and several other KDE programs, use them all in Xfce without any problems.

But, because Xfce is so much lighter, everything runs a lot snappier.

BTW: At first glance, you cannot tell the difference between my Xfce Desktop and what I had for a KDE4 Desktop.