Arch Linux

WhyT

Member

Registered: 2021-04-08

Posts: 2

Gnome/GDM stuck at black screen with mouse-cursor after boot

So, after I updated last night, I get this weird issue where I can boot just fine, but my pc gets stuck after booting at a black screen with only the mouse-cursor (which I can move). I can CTRL+ALT+F2, login in without GUI and if I then "sudo systemctl stop gdm.service" and restart it with "sudo systemctl start gdm.service", the gnome login screen appears just fine and I can login and go into my gnome DE.

However if I just "startx", gnome doesn't start (it goes into TWM).

This is quite annoying as you can imagine, does anyone have any idea what might cause this?

pxeboot

Member

Registered: 2021-04-09

Posts: 1

Re: Gnome/GDM stuck at black screen with mouse-cursor after boot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GD … ite_cursor

If this is the same issue, you essentially just need to edit /etc/systemd/system/gdm.service.d/override.conf to add a 1 or 2 second delay.

WhyT

Member

Registered: 2021-04-08

Posts: 2

Re: Gnome/GDM stuck at black screen with mouse-cursor after boot

Well, it wasn't that. I still don't know what caused it, but after the most recent update, gnome got updated (and there are some big changes) and it suddenly got fixed. Must have been some weird gnome/gdm issue..

kongeor

Member

Registered: 2013-12-08

Posts: 6

Re: Gnome/GDM stuck at black screen with mouse-cursor after boot

It was that for me though. As explained in the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GDM and pointed out by pxeboot, adding:

/etc/systemd/system/gdm.service.d/override.conf

with:

[Service]
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 2

did the trick. Thanks!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,267

Re: Gnome/GDM stuck at black screen with mouse-cursor after boot

A better approach without relying on artificial delays would be adding your GPU modules to the initramfs https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel … _KMS_start

kongeor

Member

Registered: 2013-12-08

Posts: 6

Re: Gnome/GDM stuck at black screen with mouse-cursor after boot

After checking that this is the loaded kernel module, I've modified /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:

MODULES=(amdgpu)

And regenerated initramfs.

But still bumped onto the same problem after one reboot.