Completely Frozen on LightDM Login Screen

After updating with pacman my computer freezes when the LightDM login (with Xfce) comes up. It’s fully unresponsive, TTY won’t switch and the Alt SysRq REISUB won’t reboot it. I waited roughly an hour or so the first time, so I can’t say never, but I gave up and held the power button.

I had a EOS live iso USB, and I looked through the updates and I thought it could be due to the mesa update (I saw mesa-1:25.2.2-2 on the update list), so I searched a bit and tried to pass these parameters, even though it didn’t 100% fit my situation, to see if that helped, but there was no noticeable difference. [HowTo] Mitigate GFX Crash/Lockup (apparent freeze) with amdgpu

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad with CPU AMD Ryzen 5, GPU AMD/ATI Picasso/Raven 2

Hardware Info

#################### hwinfo --short ########################

cpu:
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 2875 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 2813 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 3100 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 2855 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 2295 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 2570 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 1300 MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx, 1347 MHz
keyboard:
/dev/input/event5 SHARKOON [Mediatrack Edge Mini Keyboard]
/dev/input/event12 HP USB Keyboard
/dev/input/event6 AT Translated Set 2 keyboard
/dev/input/event23 CMF Buds Pro 2 (AVRCP)
mouse:
/dev/input/mice SHARKOON [Mediatrack Edge Mini Keyboard]
/dev/input/mice SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad
/dev/input/mice TPPS/2 ALPS TrackPoint
monitor:
27CH3
AUO LCD Monitor
graphics card:
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
camera:
IMC Networks Integrated Camera
IMC Networks Integrated Camera
sound:
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
storage:
Samsung Electronics NVMe SSD Controller 980 (DRAM-less)
AMD FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode]
network:
enp2s0 Lenovo ThinkPad E595
wlan0 Realtek RTL8822BE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi adapter
network interface:
enp2s0 Ethernet network interface
lo Loopback network interface
wlan0 WLAN network interface
disk:
/dev/nvme0n1 Samsung Electronics NVMe SSD Controller 980 (DRAM-less)
/dev/sdb SMI USB DISK
/dev/sda WDC WD10SPZX-08Z
partition:
/dev/nvme0n1p1 Partition
/dev/nvme0n1p2 Partition
/dev/sdb1 Partition
/dev/sdb2 Partition
/dev/sda1 Partition
/dev/sda2 Partition
/dev/sda3 Partition
usb controller:
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
bios:
BIOS
bridge:
AMD Family 17h (Models 00h-1fh) PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 3
AMD Raven/Raven2 PCIe GPP Bridge [6:0]
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 1
AMD Family 17h (Models 00h-1fh) PCIe Dummy Host Bridge
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 6
AMD Raven/Raven2 Root Complex
AMD Raven/Raven2 Internal PCIe GPP Bridge 0 to Bus A
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 4
AMD Raven/Raven2 PCIe GPP Bridge [6:0]
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 2
AMD Raven/Raven2 PCIe GPP Bridge [6:0]
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 0
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 7
AMD Raven/Raven2 PCIe GPP Bridge [6:0]
AMD Raven/Raven2 Internal PCIe GPP Bridge 0 to Bus B
AMD Raven/Raven2 Device 24: Function 5
hub:
Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
memory:
Main Memory
bluetooth:
Realtek RTL8822BE Bluetooth 4.2 Adapter
Realtek RTL8822BE Bluetooth 4.2 Adapter
unknown:
FPU
DMA controller
PIC
Keyboard controller
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
AMD Raven/Raven2 IOMMU
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
Lenovo ThinkPad E595
/dev/input/event13 HP USB Keyboard

I wasn’t ever able to get it to log in, so I used a live iso to arch-chroot in and restored the last timeshift snapshot before it stopped working. Which has allowed me to log in successfully.

Yesterday I attempted to update again, and everything seemed fine. I ran pacman and yay and rebooted into both the stable linux kernel and the linux lts kernel (which I typically use) with no problem. I called it good and used the computer the entire day with no issues. However, after shutting down, going to bed, and booting up in the morning, I have the same freezing issue. The cursor in the login box will blink a couple of times and stop, and everything is unresponsive.

So I went back in and restored the last working timeshift snapshot, which has let me get back in. I tried to save some logs while I was arch-chroot’d in because I figured timeshift would overwrite most of them not in my home directory. I’m not sure what is relevant right now.

I’ve been updating the same install of EOS since the beginning of 2020, so I’m not sure if my poor habits have contributed, but I’m also worried about doing a fresh install and coming up with the same problem.

I’m in over my head on this one, and I just want this to work, but I know avoiding the updates is eventually going to make it worse. I typically run pacman updates on Sundays. Last Monday was the first problem, so now I’m two weeks behind.

Edit:

I have some journalctl logs which I’ve separated, but I’m not able to locate the issue. I’m not sure if I have anything else useful. The xsession errors were a bunch of complaints about Discord and windows states not being initialized. I don’t think it logged anything worth troubleshooting because I never logged in?

This was after the updates completed and I rebooted, no problems.

The next morning, freezing.

Second attempt with the other kernel

Why not try:
sudo pacman -Syu --ignore mesa
and you find out if the problem is with that package.

Thank you for that suggestion! I can confirm that ignoring the new mesa package did not solve the issue. Is there something in these updates that might be the culprit? systemd?

Pacman Updates

aom-3.13.1-1 chromium-140.0.7339.80-1 code-1.103.2-1
discord-1:0.0.109-1 downgrade-11.5.4-1 electron37-37.4.0-1
eos-bash-shared-25.9.5-1 eos-rankmirrors-25.9-1
fluidsynth-2.4.8-1 freetype2-2.14.0-1 go-2:1.25.1-2
gperftools-2.17.2-1 grub-2:2.12.r359.g19c698d12-1
handbrake-1.10.2-1 hwdata-0.399-1 hwloc-2.12.2-1
inkscape-1.4.2-8 inxi-3.3.39.1-1 iw-6.17-1
lib32-freetype2-2.14.0-1 lib32-libffi-3.5.2-1
lib32-libjpeg-turbo-3.1.2-1 lib32-libnghttp2-1.67.0-1
lib32-libproxy-0.5.11-1 lib32-librsvg-2:2.61.1-1
lib32-libxml2-2.14.6-1 lib32-mesa-1:25.2.2-2
lib32-pango-1:1.56.4-2 lib32-systemd-257.9-1 libffi-3.5.2-1
libjpeg-turbo-3.1.2-1 liblouis-3.35.0-1 libmalcontent-0.13.1-1
libnghttp2-1.67.0-1 libopenmpt-0.8.3-1 libproxy-0.5.11-1
libreoffice-fresh-25.8.1-2 librsvg-2:2.61.1-1 libssh-0.11.3-1
libwireplumber-0.5.11-1 libxfixes-6.0.2-1 libxml2-2.14.6-1
libxnvctrl-580.82.07-1 libxpresent-1.0.2-1 libxres-1.2.3-1
libzmf-0.0.2-18 linux-6.16.5.arch1-1
linux-headers-6.16.5.arch1-1 linux-lts-6.12.45-1
linux-lts-headers-6.12.45-1 mesa-1:25.2.2-2 mlt-7.32.0-3
nodejs-lts-iron-20.19.5-1 npm-11.6.0-1 openmpi-5.0.8-3
ostree-2025.6-1 pango-1:1.56.4-2 perl-image-exiftool-13.36-1
poppler-25.09.1-1 poppler-glib-25.09.1-1 poppler-qt6-25.09.1-1
potrace-1.16-4 python-cryptography-45.0.7-1
python-eventlet-0.40.3-1 python-hypothesis-6.138.15-1
python-jsonschema-specifications-2025.9.1-1
python-markdown-3.9.0-1 python-more-itertools-10.8.0-1
python-pbs-installer-2025.09.02-1 python-pillow-11.3.0-3
python-pytest-1:8.4.2-1 python-rapidfuzz-3.14.1-1
qt5-base-5.15.17+kde+r123-2 scrcpy-3.3.2-1 sdl2_ttf-2.24.0-2
sdl3-3.2.22-1 steam-1.0.0.84-1 systemd-257.9-1
systemd-libs-257.9-1 systemd-sysvcompat-257.9-1
telegram-desktop-6.1.3-1 thunderbird-142.0-1
timeshift-25.07.7-1 uriparser-0.9.9-1 virtualbox-7.2.0-2
virtualbox-host-dkms-7.2.0-2 webkit2gtk-2.48.6-1
webkit2gtk-4.1-2.48.6-1 wireplumber-0.5.11-1
xcb-util-cursor-0.1.6-1 xfsprogs-6.16.0-2 yt-dlp-2025.09.05-1

It also occurred to me to ask if there’s some sort of difference between a reboot and a shut down that might be a clue. I was able to reboot twice but the shut down and restart has caused that freeze after updating.

Couldn’t help but noticing you are running 2 version updates from both kernels behind, and judging by the mesa update this would mean that the update is something like 9 or 10 days old. Now I am not saying that updating will solve your problem but you never know, this is a rolling distro after all.

I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but how do you create that toggle to reveal additional lines?

Click on the plus sign of the editor and next on hide details.

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Kernel can cause problems like this. But it would be strange if both caused problems.

Both have been updated, by the way: linux-lts 6.12.47-1 linux 6.16.7.arch1-1

Maybe you can try the latest version and see if it works?

I think the new kernel isn’t playing nice with the wifi driver I was using. I noted a complaint about freezing on the aur page for rtw88-dkms-git and I’ve uninstalled it and run updates to those newest kernels. If I’m not freezing and my network seems to be connecting and working, can I just leave that uninstalled? I genuinely don’t remember what the circumstances were that made me install it.

I’m going to give another shutdown and boot to make sure that was the issue, but I’m cautiously optimistic.

Yes, you can. Realtek RTL8822BE driver should be on the current kernel.

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Awesome! Thanks so much for the guidance!

Removing the rtw88-dkms-git package has stopped the freezing.

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