Arch Linux

kalachastan

Member

Registered: 2019-05-03

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] After update 'startx' shows only black screen

Hi all

This is my first post, I hope I get everything right and comply with the rules (otherwise please forgive me).

This morning I did a system update via 'pacman -Syu' and a reboot. After the login to the tty1-shell I tried to start my i3 window manager via 'startx' as usual. But this time the only thing that appeared was a black screen. i3 seemed to run in the background as the command $mod+Shift+e closed the session again. The problem is that I wasn't able to find any useful error message and I have therefore no idea how I could fix this. I looked through many posts on this and other forums but nothing seemed to work. I would be really happy if someone could help me out with this issue. In the following I post a list of things I already tried and a list of log files.

List of things I tried:

• Try again

• Reboot, then try again

• Replacing my i3 config file with the default one (same result)

• Starting i3 directly via xinit /usr/bin/i3 (same result with additional error message "No monitors found")

• Log in from tty2 and try from there (same result)

• Changing ~/.xinitrc such that xterm starts instead of i3 (see lines commented out in .xinitrc). Here too only a black screen appeared. xterm seemed also to run in the background because when I typed "exit" closed the session again.

Logs:

• The output 'startx' produces: https://pastebin.com/siKwM97z

• The log file of 'X.Org X Server': https://pastebin.com/7HnZ2y1c

• My '.xinitrc' file: https://pastebin.com/S7dvE6RH

• The log of pacman: https://pastebin.com/xaT6Rheu

• dmesg: https://pastebin.com/fF25UXR3

• journalctl: https://pastebin.com/Tb8cvKpX

Comment: The log file of the 'X.Org X Server' does display some errors (e.g. on the first line and some 'Failed to load module...' errors on later lines). However I think those lines have there been before as I have a friend which has a really similar Arch setup whose log file also displays the exact same error messages, who did also a system update this morning and who doesn't experience any problems.

Last edited by kalachastan (2019-05-03 12:24:26)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,263

Re: [SOLVED] After update 'startx' shows only black screen

Welcome to the boards, excellent first post, shows good attempts at identifying the issue and provides nearly every relevant log.

A few partial updates here, which likely meant that the nvidia driver you tried to install didn't actually work for a while but now that you've done a proper update the nvidia module actually works correctly again, which on a laptop means your system will default to an unworking state of trying to show both the nvidia and intel framebuffers. If your actual intention is to have the nvidia card enabled indefinitely add

xrandr --setprovideroutputsource modesetting NVIDIA-0
xrandr --auto

to the end of your .xinitrc before your own setxkbmap definition. If you'd rather have the card suspended and only loaded on demand to save power read https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bumblebee

kalachastan

Member

Registered: 2019-05-03

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] After update 'startx' shows only black screen

Thank you so much! This solved the problem! Incredible how you managed to read the right things from the log files and come to the correct conclusion so quickly!