Arch Linux

armandinus

Member

Registered: 2025-08-16

Posts: 6

Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

Hi everybody.

First time post for me, but I have been using Arch for a while now.

Yesterday I updated the system (I usually run

sudo pacman -Syu

), and among other things I have noticed the kernel being updated (I saw the output of mkinitcpio which is generally the indication I must admit I did not look at the list of packages being upgraded in detail before the upgrade). After a reboot, I have noticed the following behavior.

- When I start sway, the UI does not load but rather the monitor stays black.
- After a short while, the Caps Lock starts blinking.
- After some time the laptop restarts.

Looking for the explanation of what the symptoms indicate, it looks like a kernel panic. The tricky thing is that  I do not manage to see any information about the panic. I have also confirmed, after installing xorg and i3, that the problem is isolated to Wayland.

The laptop I am using is a Dell XPS 13 (9300).

One idea I was having would be to downgrade the kernel to the previous version (I should have the package in the pacman cache) but I am not sure if there is a better alternative. I am also wondering if other are experiencing the issue (I did a bit of a search through the forums but did not find anything).

Current uname otput:

$ uname -a
Linux dioniso 6.16.0-arch2-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed, 13 Aug 2025 23:38:48 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
A.

Last edited by armandinus (2025-08-16 10:17:54)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,712

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

The tricky thing is that  I do not manage to see any information about the panic.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kdump (gonna be slight PITA)

I am not sure if there is a better alternative.

https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/linux-lts/

Please post your complete system journal for a LTS boot  and a general oversight:

sudo journalctl -b | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

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armandinus

Member

Registered: 2025-08-16

Posts: 6

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

Hi seth,

as per request, let me start with the logs: https://0x0.st/Kr4l.txt

the only kernel I have is the lts one (I have not installed anything else). The one detail that might be potentially useful, though unlikely to have had an impact, is that I had the repositories of BlackArch which I recently removed (together with all the packages I installed from there.

I will look into kdump asap, thanks for the reference!

Cheers

armandinus

Member

Registered: 2025-08-16

Posts: 6

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

FYI: while attempting to setup kdumpst I apparently broke grub. I will continue with this as soon as I have the possibility to fix the grub installation.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,712

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

Journal looks harmless enough, none of the usual suspects.
Once you manage to boot 6.16 again, check

lsmod | grep wdt

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armandinus

Member

Registered: 2025-08-16

Posts: 6

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

Here we go

$ lsmod | grep wdt
iTCO_wdt               16384  0
intel_pmc_bxt          16384  1 iTCO_wdt
iTCO_vendor_support    12288  1 iTCO_wdt
intel_oc_wdt           12288  0

armandinus

Member

Registered: 2025-08-16

Posts: 6

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

Hi there again.

Firstly, I have to excuse myself: I did not understand there is a differece between linux and linux-lts (I incorrectly assumed I had already the LTS package, but that was not the case).

Considering the above, here is the logs for the LTS run: http://0x0.st/KrCA.txt

Now, the LTS (6.12.42) is not affected by the panic while the 6.16.1 is (I just upgraded and tested).

@seth would you say it is still worth debugging for figuring out what might be amiss? I am in the process of setting up simple-kdump (since kdumpst was not working and was to some extent incompatible with EFI, excluding me tinkering with its scripts).

Cheers,
A.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,712

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 0#p2256730 first
(as if that wasn't enough there's also an iwlwifi related kernel panic, to blacklist that you'd have to run on the wired ethernet for a while?)

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armandinus

Member

Registered: 2025-08-16

Posts: 6

Re: Wayland might be causing a kernel panic

I'll give it a go (I will be able to do so in a couple of days as I do not have easy access to a wired network).

Looking at the symptoms of the other thread, I do not have problems until I start Wayland (which I do by hand from tty atm) so I am skeptical it is related but i will absolutely try!