Arch Linux

nexx1

Member

Registered: 2017-08-20

Posts: 72

[solved] Booting stuck at rootarch: clean / issue was broken X11 conf

Hey!

Around 2-3 weeks ago i updated my system as usual via pacman -Syu, did some things and then shut the PC down.
Dont have much time at home, so a couple of days later the next boot ended with

rootarch: clean, 443768/1966080 files, 6861748/7864320 blocks

and a blinking underscore below.
Today i managed too live boot into manjaro, chroot into my arch install and ran a huge pile of updates.
Sadly, booting still fails.

Can i do something about this? Which logfiles can be of use which i can provide via chrooted into the system?

Last edited by nexx1 (2025-09-26 17:16:32)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: [solved] Booting stuck at rootarch: clean / issue was broken X11 conf

And what is it supposed to be doing? If you have quiet in the kernel command line, get rid of it, it may give you more info.

nexx1

Member

Registered: 2017-08-20

Posts: 72

Re: [solved] Booting stuck at rootarch: clean / issue was broken X11 conf

Uhm, it is supposed to be doing a normal boot...

Yes, there was quiet in the grub command.

Last visible line before nothing more happens now is:

 (OK) Reached target       Graphical interface.

Thats it, does not boot further... Any hints? I think i can grap all necessary/useful logs via a live usb stick

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,724

Re: [solved] Booting stuck at rootarch: clean / issue was broken X11 conf

There is no such thing as "a normal boot" in Arch. Are you trying to booting to agetty? A TUI DM? A GUI DM? Which one? X or Wayland? Remember, we have no idea how you set this system up.

nexx1

Member

Registered: 2017-08-20

Posts: 72

Re: [solved] Booting stuck at rootarch: clean / issue was broken X11 conf

With normal boot i meant just like it did all the years before.

I use LXDE + Openbox under X

i managed to change the console with ctr alt f2 and login, but i get kicked out of it to the pending boot prompt every 5 seconds so its a bit difficult

i see tons of messages like

Started LXDE Display Manager
lxdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
lxdm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'
lxdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 84

The restart counter climbed to 174 now.

In between there are some messages like

enp34s0: dhcp_envoption 24.0/3: malformed embedded option

This line appears 6 times, 3 of them in red.

startx fails with

Parse error on line 9 of section Device in file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-amdgpu.conf
This section must have an identifier line

Fatal server error:
no screens foud(EE)
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Connection refused
xinit: server error

Strange, i did not change this X config file in years, cant even remember if at all

cat 20-amdgpu.conf

Section "OutputClass"
Identifier "AMD"
MatchDriver "amdgpu"
Driver "amdgpu"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Option "VariableRefresh" "true"
EndSection

Last edited by nexx1 (2025-09-26 17:11:32)

nexx1

Member

Registered: 2017-08-20

Posts: 72

Re: [solved] Booting stuck at rootarch: clean / issue was broken X11 conf

YES!
Added Identifier "RX5700" and voila, instantly lxdm came up.

Still, i have no bloody idea how this happened. Some X oder amdgpu update that created that file wrongly?!