After latest update screen goes black when loging in

Thanks everyone for the input and help.
I’ll try to reinstall the system and check if it picks up the EnOS theming next time.
But that probably won’t happen before Monday. Time to go out now… :wink:

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Btw, are you G-Sync? (Or is your monitor capable of it?)

Yes, I think my monitor is capable of it.

Did you figure out what settings or configs were causing the issue when logging in? SSH?

Here’s another clue. It might have to do with the EnOS xfce theming.
As mentioned, despite selecting the xfce theming during installation, I am getting the vanilla xfce desktop.
This is reproducible. I did it three times now on my desktop and got the vanilla desktop everytime.
(I used the same ISO to reinstall EnOS on my laptop and there I got the EnOS themed xfce though.)
Are there any other config files outside the xfce folder that affect the xfce theming?
On the vanilla xfce I then started the welcome app and clicked on ‘Xfce EndeavourOS default theme’.
It told me that it would create a backup of my current xfce theme, how I could switch back to it and that after the reboot the new EnOS themed xfce would be there.
After the reboot, I then have the same issue again.
When I login the screen goes black.

Any ideas on why xfce would be the vanilla one after the install despite EnOS theme being select and what about the EnOS themed xfce could cause the black screen after login?

No, not yet. But I think it’s something in the ~/.config/xfce folder. See post above.

a theme cannot make blackscreen… there is no hard base for that.

Xfce you can also save a session mayby the session does not saved properly ?

thats in ~/.cache/sessions i suppose…

OK, I had the xfce vanilla desktop again, so that I could login. Then I deleted everything that was in ~/.cache/xfce/ and ~/.cache/sessions/. After that I started the welcome app again and selected the EnOS xfce theming.
When I restarted the machine, I got the blackscreen/no signal after logging in.

I think I’ll just wipe my home directory as well now and see if that eliminates the behavior.

OK, I think I wiped my home dir for nothing.
Same thing happening.
I did a complete new install with XFCE and EnOS theming and told it to wipe the system partition and the /home partition this time.
After the reboot, I tried to login in and got the black screen due to no signal again.

when you are logged in, try disable composition…

you can try : xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false

look if it to do on composition.

or eventual…

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -s glx | xpresent | off

but on theming, theming can make things ugly if its faulty…

vblank mode can cause a thing or composition???

also make sure you dont save the session :slight_smile:

What are you outputting to? Monitor? Hdmi? What is your refresh rate? Just wondering because some people are doing funky things and have 3 monitors and running 144hz?

@ricklinux I am outputting it to a single monitor via displayport. The refresh is set to whatever the fresh install sets it to.

@ringo I ran your first command
xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false
and then rebooted. After that I was able to login to the desktop. So I think you had the right idea here.
What is composition and what do I loose by not having it activated?

as disable composition is more or less, less transperancy and some thingles of xfwm could be a vblank thing set to xpresent probably
or set to off …

Hello, I kind of read the entire thread and it seems this is similar to what I faced when I tried to run XFCE in a KVM virtual machine with vritio 3D acceleration.

It’s happening due to ‘xfwm4’ the default compositor for XFCE using glx as the backend. There’s 2 solutions one to replace the xfwm4 with another compositor like compton or picom. The other is to switch the backend to something else instead of glx.

You can use the second command posted @ringo to change it for the session. To save it you can use the below code.

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -t string -s "MODE" --create

Replace the “MODE” by one of these auto, glx, xpresent, and off (using off would result in now eye candy).

I think currently you’re using the DE without composting which would result in no transparency and other eye candy stuff. But personally, I think it’s best to replace the default XFCE compositor with another like picom.

OK, I turned composition back on again via

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s true

and immediately my screen went blank again.
Then I switched to tty2 and ran

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -t string -s “auto” --create

and rebooted. The screen went blank again after the login though.
So I also tried

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -t string -s “xpresent” --create

and

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -t string -s “off” --create

but the screen went blank here as well after logging in both times.

How do I switch from xfwm4 to picom?

Also, does anyone what got changed recently about xfwm4 and composition that this now started to happen? It ran fine together for about 1.5 years.

That’s really unlucky it seems it’s the compositor that’s causing your blackout. Because when you have it disabled everything works.

I don’t think anything did but don’t know if something small did change which might have caused your issue.

You can use this post. It’s mainly written for KVM but the steps under " Installing and enabling picom" is the same for a normal desktop. Remember to disable the default xfwm4 before installing picom.

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Thanks for the link, @s4ndm4n .
I’ll give that a try.

But how do I disable xfwm4 beforehand? When I googled it, I only got results for turning specific features of xfwm4 off.

Did you try what @joekamprad suggested on post #20?

Yes, as mentioned in post #23.
Why? Does that also have an affect on compositing?

No i just wondered. I must have missed post 23.