[Help Needed] SDDM cannot start after upgrading system

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 8:08pm

Hi guys. I rebooted my PC about an hour ago after doing a full software update with yay, and now SDDM won’t load. I’m left with a black screen with only a cursor. This is the output from journalctl, and I can’t find anything wrong with it myself. Hoping someone else can figure it out because I’m at my wit’s end.

Jan 12 19:51:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Started Simple Desktop Display Manager.
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Initializing…
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Starting…
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Logind interface found
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Adding new display…
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Loaded empty theme configuration
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Xauthority path: “/run/sddm/xauth_hazbmg”
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Using VT 2
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Display server starting…
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Writing cookie to “/run/sddm/xauth_hazbmg”
Jan 12 19:51:57 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Running: /usr/bin/X -dpi 0 -background none -seat seat0 vt2 -auth /run/sddm/xauth_hazbmg -noreset -displayfd 16
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Setting default cursor
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Running display setup script “/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup”
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Display server started.
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Socket server starting…
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Socket server started.
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Loading theme configuration from “/usr/share/sddm/themes/archlinux-simplyblack/theme.conf”
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Greeter starting…
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: [PAM] Starting…
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: [PAM] Authenticating…
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: [PAM] returning.
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: pam_unix(sddm-greeter:session): session opened for user sddm(uid=962) by (uid=0)
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: Writing cookie to “/tmp/xauth_vITxpT”
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: Starting X11 session: “” “/usr/bin/sddm-greeter --socket /tmp/sddm-:0-UpSPIJ --theme /usr/share/sddm/themes/archlinux-simplyblack”
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Greeter session started successfully
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Message received from greeter: Connect
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: [PAM] Closing session
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: pam_unix(sddm-greeter:session): session closed for user sddm
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm-helper[1748]: [PAM] Ended.
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Auth: sddm-helper exited with 6
Jan 12 19:51:58 Hannah-EOS sddm[1731]: Greeter stopped. SDDM::Auth::HelperExitStatus(6)

xircon · January 12, 2025, 8:23pm

Boot from the live install media and chroot in, try the following:

sudo pacman -Syu

Carefully check the output to see if there are any errors.
You can also try this, might get you working:

sudo pacman -S lightdm
sudo systemctl enable lightdm -f

Then exit the chroot and reboot to see if the above worked.

Chroot instructions are on the wiki, but basically:

sudo mount  /dev/nvme1n1p2  /mnt 
sudo mount  /dev/nvme1n1p1  /mnt/boot/efi
sudo arch-chroot /mnt

replace p2 with your root location
replace p1 with your efi location
Both of which can be found using sudo fdisk -l from a terminal in the live session.

boxer · January 12, 2025, 8:33pm

The cause can be a broken keyboard layout at login. Instead of the correct language layout the keyboard is set to another layout. So some special characters in the password may be mapped to unexpected keys.

You can try this

Append setxkbmap (your language) at the end of /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
sudo nano /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
add setxkbmap us, ge, no, uk or whatever your language is at the end

or try this from Arch Wiki

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 8:57pm

No dice unfortunately

ringo · January 12, 2025, 9:06pm

Using archlinux theme? Try set back eos-breeze in etc/sddm/ that direction. Ctl alt f4 fortry

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 9:07pm

Thank you for the detailed explanation, but unfortunately no success No errors in the pacman output, but lightdm also refuses to launch with the following output:

Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Starting Light Display Manager…
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Starting Light Display Manager…
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jan 12 21:04:55 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Starting Light Display Manager…
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 3.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Starting Light Display Manager…
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 4.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Starting Light Display Manager…
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jan 12 21:04:56 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.
Jan 12 21:04:57 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Jan 12 21:04:57 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jan 12 21:04:57 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
Jan 12 21:04:57 Hannah-EOS systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 9:09pm

I was originally using the default breeze theme when the problem began, but changed it to an archlinux one as I saw “loaded empty theme configuration” in the systemctl output and decided to see if a different theme would fix it. Unfortunately there was no change.

ringo · January 12, 2025, 9:32pm

And df -h your root space is more then 10% left?

ringo · January 12, 2025, 9:35pm

If not do sudo paccache -rk2 to keep two older versions

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 9:51pm

Only 22% of my boot drive is in use, it’s definitely not a space issue!

ricklinux · January 12, 2025, 9:55pm

Did you change it back to the proper breeze theme?

manuel · January 12, 2025, 9:55pm

Welcome to the forum!
What packages did you just update? You’ll see that in /var/log/pacman.log.

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 9:56pm

I did, and switched back to SDDM after trying out lightdm. Didn’t change anything.

thanksforthefudge · January 12, 2025, 10:01pm

Thanks for the welcome! Just wish I could’ve joined under less frustrating circumstances

The updated packages were llvm-libs, compiler-rt, clang, doxygen, lib32-llvm-libs, libclc, llvm, qt5-tools, qt6-tools, rust, and spirv-llvm-translator.

manuel · January 13, 2025, 4:43am

Updating only those packages should not cause the issue.
But there was a mesa update recently, did you reboot right after that update?

thanksforthefudge · January 13, 2025, 11:49am

I could kiss you right now. I was using mesa-git from the AUR; swapping it out for the stable release solved everything.

manuel · January 13, 2025, 12:53pm

Great that you got it working!

Btw, I’d recommend using -git packages only for compelling reasons.

system · January 15, 2025, 12:53pm

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