System stops responding on login

mrconfused · 2024-11-13 01:50:49

Hello, I have arch installed on an external SSD and on startup, when everything is working, it boots into a terminal, where I login.

Recently, however, I have had an intermittent problem, where at this login screen I get as far as entering my username, and then it stops responding.

There are no error messages or output of any kind except a blinking cursor.

Ctrl-C, esc do nothing, and so I power my PC off and on again, after which it usually starts working again.

I am worried that at some point it will stop working altogether. How can I diagnose and resolve this problem?

Help would be very much appreciated,

Thanks

seth · 2024-11-13 08:51:28

Try to preserve a log from that, don't use the power button but https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq) or, if you can, switch the VT.

pacman -Qikk pam pambase shadow

but since it's an intermittent problem there's likely a race condition or otherwise non-deterministic behavior (RAM, CPU)

About the "external SSD", https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_ … utosuspend and perhaps https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_ … Management
Also what's on the internal drive? Windows?
3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

mrconfused · 2024-11-14 02:09:41

seth wrote:

Try to preserve a log from that, don't use the power button but https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq)

Useful shortcut! Don't know how I never encountered this before...

seth wrote:

Try to preserve a log from that ...

Which logs should I be looking at?

seth wrote:

pacman -Qikk pam pambase shadow

What am I looking for here? When I do this I get info about the pam, pambase and shadow package files and then the following lines:

warning: shadow: /etc/default/useradd (failed to calculate SHA256 checksum)
warning: shadow: /usr/bin/groupmems (GID mismatch)
warning: shadow: /usr/bin/groupmems (Permissions mismatch)
warning: shadow: /usr/bin/groupmems (failed to calculate SHA256 checksum)
shadow: 588 total files, 2 altered files

seth wrote:

Also what's on the internal drive? Windows?

Yes. I think I already disabled fast start, but I will double check.

Thanks for the help, I really like arch but I feel very ignorant about how it all works.

seth · 2024-11-14 08:07:41

Which logs should I be looking at?

The system journal.

What am I looking for here?

File deviations, non-repo version.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855

seth wrote:

but since it's an intermittent problem there's likely a race condition or otherwise non-deterministic behavior (RAM, CPU)

so I don't really expect that to be the problem anyway.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-11-13 01:50:49

System stops responding on login

#2 2024-11-13 08:51:28

Re: System stops responding on login

#3 2024-11-14 02:09:41

Re: System stops responding on login

#4 2024-11-14 08:07:41

Re: System stops responding on login

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