Arch Linux

timourf

Member

Registered: 2017-08-27

Posts: 17

[SOLVED] Unable to submit login information to TTY1

I'm using an arch install with no DM, so typically I just boot, log in to the virtual terminal with the default agetty login prompt, run startx, and my WM (i3) is launched from ~/.xinitrc

I'm running the latest Arch Linux kernel, all packages are up-to-date (as of 08/08/18).

The problem: As best I can tell, input to TTY1 is not being passed accurately from keyboard. I start typing my username and press ENTER. The cursor moves to the next line, but does not display the password prompt. I wait awhile and nothing happens, so I press ENTER again. This time, the password prompt shows up. From this point on, every key I press responds as if I had pressed ENTER after it. Each keypress "submits" to the login prompt, and I cannot login. Eventually, TTY1 clears itself and restarts. Repeat.

I can switch to a different virtual terminal, say TTY2, and login normally.

output of 'journalctl -e', notes-
-line 965: I typed my username "timourf", it tried to login for the truncated username "timour" without the "f"
-line 969: I started to type my username again, this time it registered the "t" and seemingly then a "\n" that I didn't press
-line 974: getty restarts on TTY1

output of 'dmesg'

I'm a bit at a loss as to where to start troubleshooting this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by timourf (2018-08-10 05:06:05)

timourf

Member

Registered: 2017-08-27

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to submit login information to TTY1

A very helpful redditor on /r/archlinux pointed out that this could be caused by two applications trying to read/write to the same tty port.

#lsof /dev/tty1

reported that both plymouthd and agetty were running on TTY1. Plymouth is not installed, so I did some digging and discovered that it was being called as a hook from

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf

If installed, plymouth is supposed to show a splash screen during boot until the display manager takes over (except I don't have a DM). It's called by a bunch of systemd services in

/usr/lib/systemd/system

getty is called after plymouth-quit-wait in its service file, but said service file does not exist either. My solution was to remove the plymouth hook and remake the initial ramdisk environment with

#mkinitcpio -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img

It works fine at this point, and I'm able to log in using TTY1 again. Sometime later I plan to clean up the service files by removing all of the plymouth targets. Marking as solved.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to submit login information to TTY1

Why was the plymouth hook in your mkinitcpio.conf in the first place?

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