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ki9

Member

From: Colorado, USA

Registered: 2023-07-09

Posts: 10

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[SOLVED] GUI won't load "Device or resource busy"

After a system crash I couldn't load x (i3 or xfce) or wayland (sway).  Didn't find much when searching for these errors so I thought I'd post my solution here. 

/var/log/Xorg.0.log

...
(EE) modeset(0): drmSetMaster failed: Device or resource busy
(EE) Fatal server error:
(EE) AddScreen/ScreenInit failed for driver 0
---

Sway output

[sway/server.c:137]: Unable to create backend any DRM deviceackendv/dri/card0': Resource temporarily unavailable

Sway log

[ERROR] [wlr] [libseat] [libseat/backend/logind.c:137] Could not take device: Device or resource busy
[ERROR] [wlr] [backend/session/session.c:321] Failed to open device: '/dev/dri/card0': Resource temporarily unavailable
[ERROR] [wlr] [backend/backend.c:210] Found 0 GPUs, cannot create backend
[ERROR] [wlr] [backend/backend.c:376] Failed to open any DRM device
[ERROR] [sway/server.c:137] Unable to create backend

To solve this, I tried:

lsof /dev/dri/card0

For me, this showed tigervnc's vncserver process.  I disabled it with

systemctl disable --now vncserver@:1.service

And then could start GUIs.  Not sure why the vncserver started locking the card because it had worked fine over many months and reboots.