Gnome display manager not booting properly

Desktop Environments Gnome
#1

So I installed Gnome recently and it would only boot about once every 4 or 5 restarts

I installed it multiple times and reinstalled the gnome desktop from the tty4 screen a few times just to make sure

It works normally on lightdm and ssdm, and boots every time

Is there some config file to edit, or code I can put in the terminal to make gnome boot properly with gdm? I like it better because the lockscreen doesn’t work on the other two

Not sure why it was occasionally booting after a bunch of restarts but it normally booted to a black screen with just the cursor

#2

Just happened to see this on Reddit the other day. Check the first comment:

In case it vanishes, 3 possibilities that might fix it:

  1. Switch to nouveau and insert that module into the modules section of /etc/mkinitcpio.conf (remember to rebuild!)
  2. Modify the service gdm.service, using systemctl edit gdm.service, and insert the following lines: [Service] Type=idle
  3. Modify the service gdm.service, using systemctl edit gdm.service, and insert the following lines: [Service] ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 1

#3 is what I ended up using.

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#3

Wow, thanks. I tried # 3 straight away from the tty because I had been completely locked out after entering some other systemctl commands I found on another forum

It worked the first time I tried booting it. I assume it should continue working all the time

Edit: I just got lucky that one time then it stopped booting again. It seems to be a common problem with Gnome but nothing works so far that I’ve tried. Maybe I’ll install manjaro and copy the settings file. For some reason it works there

#4

works fine here every time i boot up if you are using nvidia you may need to make a basic nvidia file. using a terminal
sudo nvidia-xconfig this will create the file just click enter type password click enter.

#5

Maybe 4. is Gnome not starting on latest kernel - #7 by tim

#6

what is your GPU and Driver? if yes Nvidia and proprietary, I would go to set early KMS loading for nvidia:

#7

I found that that worked about 90% of the time on my setup, adding the 1 second gdm delay took care of the other 10%

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#8

I tried increasing the delay and it didn’t work. I tried early KMS entries with nouveau, i915, and nvidia, and various combinations of the 3 and nothing worked (because I have a hybrid nvidia-intel system but I only have the open source drivers installed)

I tried a bunch of other suggestions from other forums and nothing worked

The only thing that works is entering a random tty (2-6) then going to tty1

That works every time and is easy enough to do

#9

I just did a system update and suddenly it rebooted fine without any tricks. I tried a couple more times and it booted every time

Thanks to the Arch or Endeavour team or whoever fixed that, much appreciated

Edit: it doesn’t work anymore, I’ll just switch to lightdm