Arch Linux

jwhendy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-01

Posts: 621

[SOLVED] Borked systemd setup -- dbus errors during boot; can't login

I have error messages very similar to this post. Unfortunately, as the author states, he never persisted in solving it but instead re-installed from scratch. I'd rather not do that.

For reference, I have a pure systemd setup -- no rc.conf file, no initscripts package, etc.

At boot I get the "Welcome to Arch!" messages followed by the various [OK] lines and then I get blindingly fast repeating lines about dbus not starting and attempting to restart it too quickly. If I walk away for about 1-2min, I finally see a login screen, but after entering my username/password, it just sits there and does nothing.

As for suspects... I had systemd working fine.
-- I updated some packages (not more than a few days worth and I'd have to check the list)
-- I also took care of manual updates to some .pacnew files I periodically check for. In this group were some biggies: group, shadow, and passwd. I did recall the odd bit about uuidd changing from uid 995 to 68, but in reading about that since then, it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

I've been booting in by appending

systemd.unit=emergency.target

to the kernel line, but my exploration hasn't been all that helpful. `journalctl since=date` reveals the errors, but I don't get much information about why dbus is having issues starting.

emergency.target also doesn't seem to be that helpful since I can't do anything with a read-only system. I'd love some suggestions about what, specifically, to check for before I reboot from Windows back into Arch and record more careful notes, probably by jotting notes onto a flash drive. Any places to start? For reference, I've done:

-- systemctl status dbus: lists as inactive (dead) and simply shows the errors I see at boot (failed to start)
-- systemctl list-units
-- systemctl list-unit-files
-- journalctl and looking around for instances of fail or failed or dbus

If I start systemd-logind.service or dbus.service, it displays a status message about running fsck and then takes me to a login prompt automatically. Then I can type in my username and password and then there's nothing after that. No prompt, just an apparent hang.

Thanks for any suggestions -- I'll take them and then collect more detailed results and report back.

Thanks!

Last edited by jwhendy (2012-11-08 16:07:33)

jwhendy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-01

Posts: 621

Re: [SOLVED] Borked systemd setup -- dbus errors during boot; can't login

As I wondered, I think it's a problem with passwd. I don't have a dbus entry and must have missed it when I was copying things around between my version and the .pacnew. Downloading an install disc now since I can't seem to change it from the recovery console due to mounting root read-only.

I'd love to know of a way to boot that avoids starting dbus and other things that might break while still having read/write access to root. Will mark solved once I update /etc/passwd and reboot.

Stebalien

Member

Registered: 2010-04-27

Posts: 1,239

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Borked systemd setup -- dbus errors during boot; can't login

mount -o remount,rw /

---

Steven [ web : git ]
GPG:  327B 20CE 21EA 68CF A7748675 7C92 3221 5899 410C

jwhendy

Member

Registered: 2010-04-01

Posts: 621

Re: [SOLVED] Borked systemd setup -- dbus errors during boot; can't login

@Stebalien: thanks for that!

Also, for reference... I booted from the install disc, edited the passwd dbus entry to match that in the backup file (passwd-) and everything is perfect.