Arch Linux

carrj

Member

Registered: 2020-12-04

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Arch not booting after upgrade

Hello,

After upgrading yesterday (2020/02/12), I have been unable to boot into Arch. After booting, I get a black screen with an underscore and the screen keeps turning on and off. I managed to downgrade all packages (to 2020/23/11) and boot normally into my system. I have no idea what the issue is here (post-hooks run great, I think I didn't install anything since previous upgrade, other than a git pager).

My question is if this could be related to https://www.archlinux.org/news/nvidia-4 … -linux-59/ and if it is OK to hold my upgrades until it is compatible again (I guess that should be announced here at some point (?)).

Steps I tried before downgrading everything:

1. Kernel parameter

acpi=off

: the screen stopped turning off and on and left me with a flickering underscore. Sometimes it gets to Disable IRQ #9, but nothing more than that.
2. (1) combined with

"nomodeset i915.modeset=0 nouveau.modeset=0"

(from https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke … de_setting) since I have nvidia optimus.
3. Booting into rescue and upgrading

pacman -Syyu

. It didn't work either.

Last edited by carrj (2020-12-04 18:07:25)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,361

Re: [SOLVED] Arch not booting after upgrade

The nvidia news is irrelevant to non CUDA usecases and also not an issue anymore with the newest packages

Are you using optimus-manager? That will have been broken by the python 3.9 update. Update again, rebuild optimus-manager, reboot.

Post your /var/log/pacman.log and try to switch to a VT from the "broken black screen" and post a

sudo journalctl -b

should the issue persist: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … in_clients

carrj

Member

Registered: 2020-12-04

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Arch not booting after upgrade

Thanks for the quick response!

Oh, I couldn't switch to a VT when I was at that broken state. Once I pressed any Ctrl-Alt-FX combination, it showed the login for a fraction of second and returned to showing the underscore.

I am using optimus-manager and what you say makes a lot of sense (still amazed that python 3.9 breaks compatibility like that). My pacman.log shows an upgrade to python3.9. I'll try what you mention in the weekend and come back here.

ciorci

Member

Registered: 2012-12-16

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Arch not booting after upgrade

if you are on gnome, downgrade gnome-shell to 3.38.1 from 3.38.2 solve the issue for me

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,685

Re: [SOLVED] Arch not booting after upgrade

Otherwise this here

After booting, I get a black screen with an underscore and the screen keeps turning on and off.

means that the DM and/or display server keeps crashing - the system actually boots fine.

Boot the multi-user.target (2nd link in my signature) and post the journal and xorg log of the previous boot (1st link and for the journal "sudo journalctl -b -1")

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

carrj

Member

Registered: 2020-12-04

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Arch not booting after upgrade

Thank you so much for all the suggestions, this was my first post here and it was super quick!

The solution from V1del worked: upgrading my system again from the normal mirrors and, then, rebuilding optimus-manager from the AUR solved the problem for me.

Related issue: https://github.com/Askannz/optimus-manager/issues/349, maybe setting a pacman hook like in one of the comments there would be a good idea.

Last edited by carrj (2020-12-04 18:06:19)