Arch Linux

nathanb

Member

Registered: 2011-11-28

Posts: 103

Website

[Solved] Desktop environment doesn't load in Virtualbox VM

I have an Arch system running inside VirtualBox (the host is also an Arch system).

I did an update today, and after reboot, the desktop environment (LXDE) no longer loads. Everything seems fine; systemd displays this:

[OK] Stopped LXDE Display Manager
[OK] Started LXDE Display Manager
[OK] Started dhcpcd on enp0s3
[OK] Reached target Network
[OK] Started OpenSSH Daemon
[OK] Reached target Multi-User System
[OK] Reached target Graphical Interface

And then it just sits there. I thought that maybe it just hadn't switched to the right virtual terminal, but VT7 doesn't display anything either. Trying to switch to a different terminal (like VT2) gives me a login prompt for about two seconds and then it switches back to VT1.

I thought I would just boot from the Arch ISO, disable lxdm, and then debug this, but when I do a chroot after mounting /dev/sda1, systemctl helpfully refuses to do anything because apparently it detects and dislikes chroot environments.

Any ideas on what's going wrong? Or tips on how to fix it?

Last edited by nathanb (2016-04-16 03:22:32)

toz

Member

Registered: 2011-10-28

Posts: 513

Re: [Solved] Desktop environment doesn't load in Virtualbox VM

Maybe this?

If so, for the time being, adding "iomem=relaxed" to my kernel boot line has temporarily got X working again - until the virtualbox-guest-utils package gets updated.

nathanb

Member

Registered: 2011-11-28

Posts: 103

Website

Re: [Solved] Desktop environment doesn't load in Virtualbox VM

toz: Thanks so much! You rock. That totally worked.