[Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

ArchM · 2020-02-10 23:52:56

As of a day or two ago, I've been greeted by a dark screen after getting past my GRUB menu. This is the usual symptom I'm used to when something is wrong with my X conf or nvidia driver, so I dove into those first, but couldn't find anything wrong. I've gotten in using the emergency kernel option, as rescue hasn't worked. I tried the multi-user.target target as well which didn't work, but this is outside of what I understand.

I recalled having at least a few successful boots since my last system upgrade, so I can't pinpoint a specific package that could be to blame either. I was basically ready to give up on this and blow away the install as an excuse to try out btrfs, but I figured I'd just boot up and leave the session alone to see what would happen. Interestingly, when I came back to my machine after a while I saw the lightdm greeter...

I can see the delay in the logs (eg. first log after delay is at Feb 10 15:06:44 also Startup finished in 4.520s (kernel) + 18min 3.052s (userspace) = 18min 7.573s.), but can't figure out what the cause is. Rather than risk snipping something important out, I've provided them in their full verbosity. I'm not very good at identifying benign errors or unusual behaviour... so apologies in advance if I'm asking for too much help here. If you have any pointers on where else to look I'd also appreciate that!

journalctl

Xorg.0.log

lightdm.log

Last edited by ArchM (2020-02-11 01:41:14)

jasonwryan · 2020-02-10 23:55:13

None of your links work for me...

Install haveged and report back if that doesn't help.

ArchM · 2020-02-10 23:58:51

jasonwryan wrote:

None of your links work for me...
Install haveged and report back if that doesn't help.

Thanks for the quick reply and sorry about the broken links, they should be fixed now along with the bad formatting.

I read a bug report about the entropy issue with lightdm, but couldn't find any evidence of it in the logs. I'll give haveged a try though now that I'm actually able to get in.

Last edited by ArchM (2020-02-11 00:22:51)

ArchM · 2020-02-11 00:03:45

jasonwryan wrote:

None of your links work for me...
Install haveged and report back if that doesn't help.

Following up, haveged seems to have fixed the issue.

As a learning exercise... how would I identify this issue on my own? The only reason I came across the bug report is because I saw a log entry about entropy (which I think happened to be benign) and went searching for results about it. What could I have done to make this behaviour suddenly show up after probably 7+ years of no issues?

jasonwryan · 2020-02-11 00:48:53

The journal is your first port of call:

Feb 10 14:49:09 arch systemd-random-seed[307]: Kernel entropy pool is not initialized yet, waiting until it is.

As to why it occurred now, no idea. Might have been some weird confluence between your hardware and kernel...

ArchM · 2020-02-11 00:54:46

jasonwryan wrote:

The journal is your first port of call:
Feb 10 14:49:09 arch systemd-random-seed[307]: Kernel entropy pool is not initialized yet, waiting until it is.
As to why it occurred now, no idea. Might have been some weird confluence between your hardware and kernel...

This line is what led me to the bug report, but I went looking further back in my logs and saw it happening on every boot since October 2nd. I assumed it was benign since all the prior boots have been fine, up until Feb 8th or so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have a solution. Just wish I had an idea of how on earth I'd figure this out on my own if it weren't for the bug report and you reminding me to try haveged. Now I'm wondering if I should switch DMs or keep haveged, since this problem is so bizarre to me.

jasonwryan · 2020-02-11 01:24:26

I don't think it is related to your DM: that is just the obvious symptom. Keep haveged and you wil be guaranteed to have sufficient entropy for the system during start up.

Please remember to mark your thread as [Solved] by editing your first post and prepending it to the title.

Arch Linux

#1 2020-02-10 23:52:56

[Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

#2 2020-02-10 23:55:13

Re: [Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

#3 2020-02-10 23:58:51

Re: [Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

#4 2020-02-11 00:03:45

Re: [Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

#5 2020-02-11 00:48:53

Re: [Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

#6 2020-02-11 00:54:46

Re: [Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

#7 2020-02-11 01:24:26

Re: [Solved] Session takes 20 minutes to start (lightdm/xorg issue?)

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