Tumbleweed spiraling down... Repair display manager?

English Install/Boot/Login
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1

Hi all,

this is what I did because I had 2 unlock key dialogs on each boot (using gnome desktop):

  • auto login disabled with yast
  • logout: freeze (black screen with non blinking cursor in upper left corner)
  • reboot: console messages say “cannot load nvidia module”
  • mokutil --import, reboot: nvidia module/util version mismatch
  • zypper dup: root full, freed up space
  • zypper dup, reboot: black screen as above
  • reboot to “runlevel 3”, nmcli c up
  • zypper rm xdm gdm, zypper in gdm, reboot: black screen as above
  • reboot 3, nmcli c up
  • zypper rm xdm gdm, zypper in sddm, reboot: console login, startx

This starts icewm, where I currently write this.

I know there is a lot of relatively new stuff going on with wayland and gnome, so my old knowledge may not apply. Is it even worth trying to save this? I could restore my home directory…

2

hmm, second reboot got me directly to the sddm login screen. Looks like I am back to “normal”, more or less.

Uninstalling sddm and reinstalling gdm still gets me locked black screen without text consoles.
I needed to reboot (ctrl-alt-del) in runlevel 3 (edit grub commandline), start network with nmcli and reinstall sddm to get a gui. Do I have to say good bye to gdm now?

3

My Bluetooth headset connects, but is not chosen as output device. Not ALL back to normal…

Edit: works after toggling bt connection off/on several times…

4

Is it possible that you have a problem with your hardware?

Did you try running smartctl in a terminal?
Just in order to check one possible cause of your problems.

5

smartctl says my nvme is fine

6

You were using Gnome with X sessions? Be aware that with the upgrade to Gnome 49 gdm no longer supports X sessions, so you have to switch to Wayland or use a different display manager; sddm should still support X sessions AFAIK.
Or you might be affected by bug 1250513, see for instance after-update-no-login-gdm-could-not-obtain-user-info-gdm-greeter

1 Like
7

Gnome settings say I am currently using Wayland. But before login the displaymanager must be sddm. The gdm does not work (boot freezes as described above).

Only “flaw” with sddm login: it says country is US, but my keyboard is definitely using DE (QWERTZ) anyways. Irritating for entering passwords, but can live with that…

looking into the nsswitch stuff now…

8

Hmm, from the bug descriptions it looks like that gdm problem should affect every “normal” updating tumbleweed user using gnome. From the low volume of forum messages it seems like I am one of the last remaining gnome users and all the others were more clever and already migrated away to something else?

9

No, many don’t have an /etc/nsswitch.conf at all; that is added on purpose by the sysadmin or possibly by some packages that are not in the default install.

10

/etc/nsswitch.conf is/was provided by glibc which is part of every installation.

1 Like
11

Well, mine is among the oldes files in /etc, same age as machine-id: Jul 2022. I.e. it came with my tumbleweed install. I know what it is for but had no need to change it on this environment.

Edit: installed plasma pattern now and it is currently working fine with wayland.

Only flaw for now: on my german keyboard the gt/lt/pipe key is dead. Need to check if that is also the case with gnome or icewm or the console…

12

Console: > works, <| dont. Also “f” doesnt work!? “F” works though…
IceWM, Plasma: <>| dont work
Gnome: all work

Just FYI: I did not fiddle with keyboard setup.

interesting… So for now it seeme I have to use Sddm with Gnome/Wayland and hope I dont need the text console too much…

13

I see that glibc provides both /usr/etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf but on this system only the first one was installed (which makes sense to me…).

14

activated “multiple keyboard layouts” and selected DE keyboard in plasma settings. Now <>| works here, too. Strange.

Console still more or less unusable without |,< and f. All other keys work there.

15

localectl set-keymap de brought back “f”, “<” and “|” on the console. Happy - for now.

Just strange because I cannot imagine how that broke.

16

for completeness: above fiddling with console and plasma keyboard layout also fixed it for icewm.

Glad I finally found a reason to switch back to kde (after I switched to gnome when plasma was young and unstable).

Thanks for your support!