Arch Linux

Yann21

Member

Registered: 2020-06-12

Posts: 28

[SOLVED] Black screen after bootloader stage

After installing a couple of overdue updates, my computer booted into a black screen. The boot passes the bios and grub then reaches a black screen with the tty not being accessible. I had to chroot from an external USB to disable KMS as recommended in another thread. Although this didn't do anything. Now I will try to rollback the updates and see if it helps.

Do you think the problem has to do with LightDM?

Last edited by Yann21 (2021-12-29 17:02:05)

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,491

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after bootloader stage

If LightDM is involved, you will probably see the screen backlight switching on when it tries to start. If the screen turns completely black, the problem is probably prior.
As long as you get the grub menu, you can alter the start up to rescue mode (faster than chroot-ing from USB).
Have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … t_problems

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after bootloader stage

@OP: what is your graphics hardware and driver(s)? NVIDIA has been troublesome recently, if various threads are anything to go by.

Do you think the problem has to do with LightDM?

Not if you can't access the TTY. You should post exactly how you are trying to do that. Have you tried disabling the display manager? This command will do that (run it from the chroot):

# systemctl set-default multi-user.target # graphical.target will re-enable the display manager

---

Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

Yann21

Member

Registered: 2020-06-12

Posts: 28

Re: [SOLVED] Black screen after bootloader stage

Turns out LightDM was at fault. As soon as I deactivated the display manager using your command I got to a prompt. I then started to dig with

lightdm --debug

LightDM was crashing because I had renamed one of my dotfiles but hadn't changed the name in etc/profile which was ultimately sourced by LightDM. In the end, this had nothing to do with the update and everything to do with a mistake I made.

Thanks for helping me out!

Last edited by Yann21 (2021-12-29 17:04:06)