Arch Linux

T3STY

Member

Registered: 2020-01-29

Posts: 9

Stuck on black screen before gdm on boot - sometimes

I am running the latest version of Arch and packages on my Sony Vaio (SVE151D11M) laptop, and this is the worst issue that I have with it.

When I boot the laptop, the boot process will get stuck after loading the initial ramdisk, just about before the login screen should appear (the gnome gdm login in my case).
The screen remains black with the flashing cursor at the top-left corner, and will display text if I type on the keyboard.
I am able to switch TTY with CTRL+ALT+F1-7, and I can successfully login into a terminal session. However, I am not sure how to start a gdm screen from the terminal, or how to start a graphical environment at all...

The issue happens only sometimes.
The most frequent circumstance is when I leave the laptop turned off for some long time (for example, when I turn it off the night before and turn it on the morning after). However, this is not a rule of thumb as other times it boots to the login screen just fine on the first cold boot.

In order to get a login screen after this issue I have to hard-shutdown the computer (via power button long-press), or do a soft reboot via CTRL+ALT+DELETE (or sudo reboot from another TTY).
None of these solutions actually solve the issue every time, and multiple reboots are required sometimes.

I have found various threads while searching on the forum, this one in particular at post 1642052, suggesting to add the flag systemd.restore_state=0 (or 1) to the boot parameters ( /etc/default/grub at GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, and then mkinitcpio from terminal). I tried, but the issue persists. The thread is quite old, and threads from 2014 or even 2006 pop up when searching further.
My Arch install is from 1 year ago, constantly updated. I cannot remember if a year ago I had this issue, but I definitely have it since at least 6 months ago.

Any suggestions on what to do about this issue ?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,650

Re: Stuck on black screen before gdm on boot - sometimes

Post a journal log from a not working boot in [ code ] [ /code ] tags. Some common point that could be an issue here is the race condition with setting up the drm device during start up, in which case doing

echo drm > /etc/modules.load.d/drm.conf

from a root shell should help

SurlyCycler

Member

Registered: 2019-10-26

Posts: 47

Re: Stuck on black screen before gdm on boot - sometimes

just out of curiousity.... do you have anything plugged into your usb ports when you boot? I had something similar to what you are describing with a yubikey left in... but when i took it out it booted normally.

Just curious.

Last edited by SurlyCycler (2020-01-31 01:08:28)

T3STY

Member

Registered: 2020-01-29

Posts: 9

Re: Stuck on black screen before gdm on boot - sometimes

I have been looking through the systemd journal logs, mostly it's fine but I have managed to find this error highlighted. It's from 2 days ago, but I can't remember whether at the time of this log I had a problem or not.

an 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: ---[ end trace 9464f9644e34e4c2 ]---
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  ret_from_fork+0x35/0x40
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  ? kthread_park+0x90/0x90
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  ? process_one_work+0x3b0/0x3b0
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  kthread+0xfb/0x130
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  worker_thread+0x4a/0x3d0
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  process_one_work+0x1e2/0x3b0
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: Call Trace:
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: CR2: 00007f0b13944000 CR3: 000000000fa0a002 CR4: 00000000000606e0
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: FS:  0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff8b51cb080000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: R13: ffff8b51c8b3e8c0 R14: ffff8b511b25f6f0 R15: ffff8b51ad135400
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: R10: ffff8b51c7dbf42c R11: 0000000000000018 R12: ffff8b51c8b3efa0
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: RBP: ffff8b51c87607a0 R08: 0000000030796870 R09: 8080808080808080
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: RDX: 0000000000000001 RSI: 0000000000000246 RDI: 00000000ffffffff
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: RAX: 0000000000004a88 RBX: ffff8b51c8b3ef80 RCX: 0000000000000088
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: RSP: 0018:ffff9ce301983e38 EFLAGS: 00010246
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: Code: 84 00 00 00 3c 02 74 6b 84 c0 74 52 0f 0b e9 b7 fe ff ff 4c 89 f6 4c 89 >
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: RIP: 0010:ieee80211_iface_work+0x2bd/0x350 [mac80211]
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: Workqueue: phy0 ieee80211_iface_work [mac80211]
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: Hardware name: Sony Corporation SVE1511Q1ESI/VAIO, BIOS R0170E5 03/23/2012
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: CPU: 2 PID: 2428 Comm: kworker/u16:4 Not tainted 5.4.15-arch1-1 #1
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel:  crc16 mbcache jbd2 sr_mod cdrom sd_mod rtsx_pci_sdmmc mmc_core ahci serio_raw>
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: Modules linked in: fuse ccm intel_rapl_msr intel_rapl_common x86_pkg_temp_ther>
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 2428 at net/mac80211/iface.c:1317 ieee80211_iface_work+0x>
Jan 30 18:36:44 T3STY-Arch kernel: ------------[ cut here ]------------

Also, I could find a few more warnings appearing from time to time. These ones seem to be repeating between sessions.

Jan 31 23:05:40 T3STY-Arch gsd-media-keys[909]: Failed to grab accelerator for keybinding settings:playback-random
Jan 31 23:05:40 T3STY-Arch gsd-media-keys[909]: Failed to grab accelerator for keybinding settings:hibernate
Jan 31 23:05:40 T3STY-Arch gsd-media-keys[909]: Failed to grab accelerator for keybinding settings:playback-repeat
Jan 31 23:05:40 T3STY-Arch gsd-media-keys[909]: Failed to grab accelerator for keybinding settings:rfkill

Jan 30 15:57:47 T3STY-Arch NetworkManager[383]: <warn>  [1580392667.5019] sup-iface[0x560007bf0930,wlp1s0]: connection disconnected (r>
Jan 30 15:57:47 T3STY-Arch wpa_supplicant[449]: dbus: wpa_dbus_property_changed: no property SessionLength in object /fi/w1/wpa_suppli>


Jan 31 23:05:16 T3STY-Arch kernel: uvcvideo 1-1.3:1.0: Entity type for entity Camera 1 was not initialized!
Jan 31 23:05:16 T3STY-Arch kernel: uvcvideo 1-1.3:1.0: Entity type for entity Processing 2 was not initialized!
Jan 31 23:05:16 T3STY-Arch kernel: uvcvideo 1-1.3:1.0: Entity type for entity Extension 3 was not initialized!

For the sake of trial and error, I have run the command you mentioned, @V1del, maybe it helped. I have not experienced another failed boot yet (but I have only booted twice since, so I'm not optimistic)

@SurlyCycler: Usually, I have a USB mouse attached to a USB 2.0 port. Not always though, and I remember I had failed boots before plugging in the mouse. No other devices are connected on the external USB ports, however, the integrated webcam of the laptop seems to be connected via an internal USB port as well.