Black screen after I start up my computer. I can get to TTY :-(

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 5:23pm

Idk what I did but I can only get to TTY now. I’m totally confused as how to fix this I am so sorry this happened. I got stuff on my computer that I need to do idk any help would be very, very, appreciated. I was trying to install cosmic desktop enviroment, i3, sway, and hyperland on my computer right before this happened. I honestly didn’t know what I was doing though and I think I screwed everything up. I don’t even remember exactly what I did so that’s a big problem too. I am so sorry but yeah if anyone could help me I would really, really appreciate it because I need my stuff off my computer. I know there’s a way of finding errors and stuff on Linux but I don’t know how to do it. If I could find the errors maybe you could point me to some kind of solution. Thanks again to the endeavors community. This totally sucks me honest but hopefully someone can help me figure it out.

I tried the journalctl but it returned so much information I was overwhelmed by it and I couldn’t understand what it was even saying really

I am doing journal -b and putting the error messages into Google so far no luck though but hopefully something will show up or I guess stands out

Here like the orange text I keep looking

I’ll let you guys know if anything stands out too

Here’s some red text I don’t know I’ll just keep looking and looking

Failed to start greeter daemon (going to Google that)

Yeah I think it may be related to that failed to start greeter daemon error I think that may have something to do with it but I don’t know I’ll keep investigating

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:17pm

It was related to that

But if I do “systemctl stop sddm” and then “systemctl start sddm”, the greeter starts up and everything is as normal.

I did this and guess what… It started like instantly.

I’m going to restart and see if it still works when I do my restart. Looking good guys it looks like I might have fixed my own problem for once.

Nope darn it still blank screen

Yup once I get to TTY I enter systemctl start sddm and I can get into my computer but it still loads to a black screen initially

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:24pm

It is better to install only one desktop environment and test everything else in a VM.

Try

sudo systemctl enable sddm

as soon as you have access to a tty again.

And then I would try to uninstall all other desktop environments. As you can see for yourself, this just makes a massive mess

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:27pm

yes thank you! you are making A LOT OF SENSE to me. i am not going to install that much stuff again like that. that defintiely mad a HUGE MESS of things. bad idea… will do as you suggested in the future. here what i am getting back: Failed to enable unit: File ‘/etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service’ already exists and is a symlink to /usr/lib/systemd/system/greetd.service

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:30pm

What says

systemctl status sddm.service

?

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:31pm

it returns A LOT OF INFO:


 systemctl status sddm.service

● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-09-28 14:20:32 EDT; 10min ago
 Invocation: 063eef4dda8746029e5e0f1fe0af4acc
       Docs: man:sddm(1)
             man:sddm.conf(5)
   Main PID: 1106 (sddm)
      Tasks: 15 (limit: 8712)
     Memory: 181.6M (peak: 193.2M)
        CPU: 627ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
             ├─1106 /usr/bin/sddm
             └─1111 /usr/lib/Xorg -nolisten tcp -background none -seat seat0 vt1 -auth /run/sddm/xauth_EDRucj -nor>

Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Authentication for user  "fj"  successful
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:setcred): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_setcred
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_unix(sddm:session): session opened for user fj(uid=1000) by fj(ui>
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_systemd(sddm:session): New sd-bus connection (system-bus-pam-syst>
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:session): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_open_session
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: Starting Wayland user session: "/usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-sessi>
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Auth: sddm-helper exited successfully
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Greeter stopped. SDDM::Auth::HELPER_SUCCESS
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Session started true
lines 1-24/24 (END)...skipping...
● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-09-28 14:20:32 EDT; 10min ago
 Invocation: 063eef4dda8746029e5e0f1fe0af4acc
       Docs: man:sddm(1)
             man:sddm.conf(5)
   Main PID: 1106 (sddm)
      Tasks: 15 (limit: 8712)
     Memory: 181.6M (peak: 193.2M)
        CPU: 627ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
             ├─1106 /usr/bin/sddm
             └─1111 /usr/lib/Xorg -nolisten tcp -background none -seat seat0 vt1 -auth /run/sddm/xauth_EDRucj -noreset -displayfd 16

Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Authentication for user  "fj"  successful
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:setcred): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_setcred
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_unix(sddm:session): session opened for user fj(uid=1000) by fj(uid=0)
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_systemd(sddm:session): New sd-bus connection (system-bus-pam-systemd-1187) opened.
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:session): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_open_session
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: Starting Wayland user session: "/usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-session" "/usr/lib/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland"
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Auth: sddm-helper exited successfully
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Greeter stopped. SDDM::Auth::HELPER_SUCCESS
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Session started true
~
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lines 1-24/24 (END)

i will look for red errors and get back to you i will try and go through it for you and see about that… cuz that isn’t all of it

here is so more:


● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-09-28 14:20:32 EDT; 10min ago
 Invocation: 063eef4dda8746029e5e0f1fe0af4acc
       Docs: man:sddm(1)
             man:sddm.conf(5)
   Main PID: 1106 (sddm)
      Tasks: 15 (limit: 8712)
     Memory: 181.6M (peak: 193.2M)
        CPU: 627ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
             ├─1106 /usr/bin/sddm
             └─1111 /usr/lib/Xorg -nolisten tcp -background none -seat seat0 vt1 -auth /run/sddm/xauth_EDRucj -noreset -displayfd 16

Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Authentication for user  "fj"  successful
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:setcred): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_setcred
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_unix(sddm:session): session opened for user fj(uid=1000) by fj(uid=0)
Sep 28 14:22:02 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_systemd(sddm:session): New sd-bus connection (system-bus-pam-systemd-1187) opened.
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: gkr-pam: unlocked login keyring
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: pam_kwallet5(sddm:session): pam_kwallet5: pam_sm_open_session
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm-helper[1187]: Starting Wayland user session: "/usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-session" "/usr/lib/plasma-dbus-run-session-if-needed /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland"
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Auth: sddm-helper exited successfully
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Greeter stopped. SDDM::Auth::HELPER_SUCCESS
Sep 28 14:22:03 whitewolf sddm[1106]: Session started true
lines 1-24/24 (END)

TBH I hope that helps you. It confused me…

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:35pm

That seems fine for me. sddm is acivated and running

If you are still not forwarded directly to sddm after booting, we have to hope that someone else will help.

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:38pm

THANKX SWH! It is not, so I shall wait on more help and in the mean time continue investigating myself. I will restart one more time just to check though but I don’t think so. Also on this forum I will try and make my posts more clear and grammatically correct. Kind of a jerk move to be so sloppy and ask people to go out of there way to help me. Expecting them to read through bad grammer and spelling isn’t exactly nice considering they are trying to help and understand what I am saying. I will try and be more clear from now on. Also in the mean time I will try and figure things out on my own.

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:40pm

there is still a greetd.service active, you could switch it off.

sudo systemctl disable greetd.service

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:43pm

I just did what you said swh! I am going to reboot and let you know if things go well! THANKX

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:44pm

Don’t worry. English is not my native language and I have to translate a lot. But I hope you understand me

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:46pm

I do indeed understand you, your english is not bad at all really. I honestly had no idea English was not your native language, lol. I just assumed you speak English. Wow that is amazing your helping people fix computers and your not even doing it in your own launage. Wow that would be a challenge. HAHA Unfortunately what you told me to do still didn’t work. I can still get into my computer by doing: systemctl start sddm. then i boot into sddm but I initally still get a blank screen. Nice try though.

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:47pm

try that command with sudo

sudo systemctl start sddm.service

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:48pm

I complied with what you told me to do and I am going to try and reboot now to see if it worked. Hoping for the best!

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:51pm

bummer good

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:52pm

If nothing works then do it one by one

sudo systemctl enable --now sddm.service

then

sudo systemctl start sddm.service

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:52pm

perfect!!

Well done mate Please mark one post that works for you as solution

Forget about my post above then

swh · September 28, 2024, 6:54pm

greetd.service has something to do withz hyprland. But my knowledge leaves a lot to be desired to be able to explain that to you

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:56pm

bummer not good i meant sorry MY BAD

whitewolfAK47 · September 28, 2024, 6:57pm

this maybe the solution though I SHALL TRY IT OUT