[SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

Br33213 · 2017-11-07 15:11:21

Hello everyone,

I have a bit of a weird problem. sddm.service is normally enabled on my system, but it does not start automatically on battery (the last journalctl message about it says sddm is 'starting'). The weird thing is that on AC everything works fine. Also, if I disable sddm.service, reboot on battery and do sudo systemctl start sddm.service, it does start. I don't reallly know what is causing this but it started after I disabled my integrated graphics on my CPU (it was generating too much heat so I now only use the dedicated graphics card (nvidia quaddro K1100m)for graphics).

In the beginning I thought Xorg was causing the problem, since when it hangs on boot and I go to tty2, the command xrandr gives the output 'no display found'.
I also had both tlp and laptop-mode tools installed at some point (and they gave some options to disable the graphics card while on battery). They are removed completely now and so are all of their configuration files, they may have left a trace though.

tl;dr:

Symptoms:
1: sddm.service does not automatically start on BATTERY, while it does work just fine on AC
2: If i disable sddm.service, reboot and do "sudo systemctl start sddm.service" while on battery, it also works

Possible causes (or at least the ones I could think of):
1: tlp or laptop-mode tools (although they are uninstalled at the moment)
2: something wrong with sddm.service
3: something wrong with Xorg

Kind regards and thanks for reading, I look forward to any suggestions.

br33213

Last edited by Br33213 (2017-11-11 19:13:45)

Scimmia · 2017-11-07 15:27:32

Try searching here, the bug tracker, or the upstream bug tracker.

Br33213 · 2017-11-07 17:34:45

Thank you for your answer!

Would you recommend searching for a bug in sddm or in xorg and consorts?

seth · 2017-11-07 22:09:10

Well, does startx or xdm work?
Also, since you mentioned "tlp" you probably care about battery runtime? In that case read up the wiki on setting up an optimus system rather than running the GPU all the time (I assume that it was the GPU that caued the heat, because it ran uninitialized?)

Scimmia · 2017-11-07 23:04:12

There are known issue with sddm right now, that's what you'd want to search for.

cfr · 2017-11-07 23:49:33

tlp conflicts with laptop-mode-tools, so you shouldn't have had both installed.

Br33213 · 2017-11-08 19:48:36

Thank you for your answers!

When I try startx it gives me a dark grey screen and does not go further than that. I tried xdm too. However, when I login and press enter, it tries to load the screen (I think) but fails and then goes back to the login page. As for the Optimus configuration, I did follow the wiki on that and successfully configured it. Somehow it seemed though that my graphics card was way more efficient at doing graphics (I'm pretty sure the video card is more to the right under my keyboard and the CPU is definitely at the left, where the fan is and where the heat was coming from). That is why I disabled the integrated graphics through the BIOS (it might be worth noting that I had a similar heating problem (albeit less severe) when I installed windows 7 over the initially installed windows 8).

As for tlp and laptop-mode tools. I know they can cause conflicts and I did indeed make that mistake, but both of them were already removed from my system. However I think some of the settings might not be properly cleaned up, causing the computer to want to use integrated graphics on battery but can't because they are disabled through the BIOS. When I re-enable integrated graphics in the BIOS and boot, I get 1: a lower screen resolution, and 2: the CPU starts heating up almost immediately while the fan starts spinning right after boot.

Sorry for the late answer, today was a busy day.
Kind regards

Last edited by Br33213 (2017-11-08 20:00:52)

seth · 2017-11-08 22:46:34

When I try startx it gives me a dark grey screen and does not go further than that. I tried xdm too. However, when I login and press enter, it tries to load the screen (I think) but fails and then goes back to the login page.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinit
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XDM

Br33213 · 2017-11-11 19:13:15

After some more thorough searching I tracked the problem to exist because the Nvidia driver loads too slow, putting a delay (in my case 2 seconds) on the startup on sddm.service thus seems to be the solution. You can make the timer service as explained here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=189145

Thanks for the help!
Kind regards

Scimmia · 2017-11-12 02:03:14

Or, as the threads and bug reports tell you, just put the modules in the initramfs.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-11-07 15:11:21

[SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#2 2017-11-07 15:27:32

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#3 2017-11-07 17:34:45

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#4 2017-11-07 22:09:10

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#5 2017-11-07 23:04:12

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#6 2017-11-07 23:49:33

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#7 2017-11-08 19:48:36

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#8 2017-11-08 22:46:34

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#9 2017-11-11 19:13:15

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

#10 2017-11-12 02:03:14

Re: [SOLVED] sddm.service does not start on battery

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