Tumbleweed randomly boots with SDDM after restart (using SSD)

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi! My problem is, that when I restart (or boot) my laptop, more often than not, at the moment when I expect SDDM to appear, a black screen pops-up with an underscore (or underline _ ) and that’s it. When I enter tty, I can login, restart my computer and after 3-4 tries SDDM finally shows. The only thing that I do in tty is just login, ask for root and then reboot. I am suspecting maybe that something doesn’t start in time (due to SSD) and sometimes I am just lucky. How can I solve this?

Thank you!

#2

FWIW
I see the underscore character (top left of screen) but SDDM always appears around 6-8secs later… it just seems slow to start.

#3

Yes, but in my case due to the SSD, SDDM shows just a moment later (second or less) or not at all (more often than SDDM).

#4

AFAIK this is being worked on. Nothing to do with SSD, but with sddm starting too fast. Again AFAIK the fix is already in the Frameworks5 repo.

#5

Seroiusly…do you have any references to the bug reports or sth similar?

#6

I think Knurpht means this:
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=942815
But the patch mentioned there is already in Tumbleweed…

Then there are also those bug reports against Leap 42.1 Milestone2, which might not apply to Tumbleweed:
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=940293
https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=944659 (which seems not to be related to SDDM at all)

As I mentioned in the first one, there’s only one such problem I experienced myself: SDDM hangs with a black screen if Autologin is turned on and the configured session (in /etc/sddm.conf) does not exist (the default is hardcoded to Plasma5 in openSUSE).
I filed an upstream bug report about this: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/497
But that can’t really be your problem, as this should happen every time, not randomly…

One suggestion:
Try to install sddm 0.12.0 from http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Frameworks5/openSUSE_Factory/, or wait for the next snapshot (to be released in the next days) which should have it too.
Maybe that one works better for you?

Of course, a workaround would also be to use another display manager. Good options would probably be kdm (still in Tumbleweed :wink: ) or lightdm.
You can set the one to use in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager.

#7

We have a(n almost new) Lenovo, where I see this issue 497. Grabbed ssdm from Frameworks5 and the issue’s gone. The nasty thing is that I cannot find anything in the log files / journalctl.

Of course, a workaround would also be to use another display manager. Good options would probably be kdm (still in Tumbleweed :wink: ) or lightdm.
You can set the one to use in /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager.

#8

Well, the mentioned “issue 497” is still present in the KDE:Frameworks5 version, and in latest upstream git AFAICT.
That would also be easily workarounded by setting an existing session in /etc/sddm.conf or systemsettings5’s sddm module, and is really only a problem if you try to use sddm in a minimal (or GNOME e.g.) installation without Plasma5 installed…

So your problem seems not to have been that, but as upgrading helped, it might help the OP too, I suppose.

#9

Thanks for that, it works now. I upgraded the SDDM to 0.12.0 (with Frameworks5 repo) and locked updates for this package for now and when the new version comes in the official tumbleweed repo, I will remove the F5 repo.

#10

Ok, good to hear! :slight_smile:

As mentioned, 0.12.0 should be in the next snapshot, which unfortunately has been delayed too long now for other reasons…