Arch Linux

Zoddo

Member

Registered: 2021-06-11

Posts: 12

[SOLVED] Budgie not starting after update to 10.10

Hello,

I've come across my first "arch broke itself" after running an update over 5 years of using arch.

To begin, in case this may be of importance, my system hasn't been updated since early January. It's not in my habits, but things have prevented me from doing my routine maintenance during the last month.

So, I ran my system update (classic [c]sudo pacman -Suy[/c] after first updating [c]pacman-keyring[/c] alone), which included an update of budgie-desktop (and related packages) from 10.9.4-2 to 10.10.1-2.

I fixed the few .pacnew (nothing related to budgie) and rebooted the system.

Upon reboot I enter my password on lightdm... and the password checkbox disappear, but nothing else happens. My screen get stuck on lightdm.

Checking the journalctl, 3 lines appears after typing my password:

Feb 15 17:52:02 arch lightdm[962]: gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file
Feb 15 17:52:02 arch lightdm[962]: gkr-pam: stashed password to try later in open session
Feb 15 17:52:02 arch lightdm[1640]: Can't open display

That's all. The 2 first lines already appeared in previous pre-upgrade boots, so they are very likely unrelated to my issue.

I end up with a simple "Can't open display" that I don't know what to do with.

During my researches, I've found that budgie 10.10 switched to Wayland and dropped X11 at the same time (all in a minor update ).

I have Wayland installed on my system, but I don't know if I'm missing something to make it work (I've have literally zero experience with Wayland).

The absence of any other report for the same issue, either in arch's forums, gitlab, budgie's GitHub, reddit... or any news on the arch website tell me that this update should have been transparent.

I've a pre-update btrfs snapshot that I'll probably rollback for now (first time too I will have to do this), but this won't fix the issue long term.

If someone has an idea how to diagnosis or fix the issue, I'd be very grateful.

Last edited by Zoddo (2026-02-24 19:18:37)

Zoddo

Member

Registered: 2021-06-11

Posts: 12

Re: [SOLVED] Budgie not starting after update to 10.10

Hello,

I investigated again today.

After focusing more on LightDM than Budgie/Wayland, I actually found the issue :
I have a script set in the lightdm config to turn off external screens when the computer is locked on the login screen:

[Seat:*]
...
display-setup-script=/usr/local/bin/internal-screen-only.sh

It's a very simple script, but which calls xrandr.

#!/bin/sh

/usr/bin/grep open /proc/acpi/button/lid/LID/state > /dev/null

if [[ $? -eq 1 ]]; then
	echo "Lid is closed, lets autodetection choose best settings"
	exit
fi

exec /usr/bin/xrandr \
	--output DP-1 --off \
	--output HDMI-1 --off \
	--output HDMI-2 --off \
	--output eDP-1 --auto --primary

However, it seems that this screen is executed again after logging in when starting a wayland session (it's not the case with X11), and of course... it fails, as shown by the debug logs of LightDM:

[+3.55s] DEBUG: Greeter start authentication for zoddo
[+3.55s] DEBUG: Session pid=979: Started with service 'lightdm', username 'zoddo'
[+3.58s] DEBUG: Session pid=979: Got 1 message(s) from PAM
[+3.58s] DEBUG: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s)
[+5.77s] DEBUG: Continue authentication
[+5.81s] DEBUG: Session pid=979: Authentication complete with return value 0: Success
[+5.81s] DEBUG: Authenticate result for user zoddo: Success
[+5.81s] DEBUG: User zoddo authorized
[+5.81s] DEBUG: Greeter requests session budgie-desktop
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Creating display server of type wayland
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Using VT 8
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Launching process 999: /usr/local/bin/internal-screen-only.sh
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Process 999 exited with return value 1
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Exit status of /usr/local/bin/internal-screen-only.sh: 1
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Stopping display server due to failed setup script
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Display server stopped
[+5.82s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Stopping session
[+5.83s] DEBUG: Session pid=979: Exited with return value 0
[+5.83s] DEBUG: Seat seat0: Session stopped
[+5.83s] DEBUG: Releasing VT 8

So I just added a check at the top so it doesn't do anything if not on X11:

if [[ -z $XAUTHORITY ]]; then exit; fi

I can now access the session (this message is posted from Budgie 10.10 with Wayland )

I have another issue with the trackpad, but I'll open a separate topic for that.