sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

FindIdiotInMirror · 2025-11-27 06:08:10

Yesterday my system hung while trying to run an old game with Steam. After restarting everything seemed fine, but when I quit hyprland I was just greeted with a black/blank screen with just an underline cursor in the top left corner instead of the sddm greeter screen.

Today I've managed to isolate it to only happen *only* when I log in with hyprland(uwsm-managed). hyprland on it's own was ok as was i3.

I can't find anything unique in the journalctl and not even sure where I should be looking...

journalctl output from when this happened https://paste.c-net.org/EduardArmenian,

specifically it hangs at the 15:10 mark

kotirosvo · 2025-11-29 11:15:45

I have the exact same problem. Initial logging in works but logging out with hyprctl dispatch exit throws to black screen with cursor that is not responsive.

Happens also with a fresh archinstall. It used to work a week ago.

loginctl kill-session $XDG_SESSION_ID works.

HasakeShinonome · 2025-11-30 12:40:39

Probably an irrelevant question, since you seem to know what journalctl is, but have you looked at the status of the sddm service?

sudo systemctl status sddm.service

If it's stopped or had errors during start-up, it wouldn't work after the initial initializing. Sorry if you already did this, just trying to help.

Last edited by HasakeShinonome (2025-11-30 12:41:05)

seth · 2025-11-30 16:31:32

sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

Don't do that?
uwsm is

A standalone Wayland session manager

- you're effectively running two DMs on top of each other.
Just start a normal hyprland session if you're using SDDM

kotirosvo · 2025-12-04 15:55:39

seth wrote:

sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)
Don't do that?
uwsm is
A standalone Wayland session manager
- you're effectively running two DMs on top of each other.
Just start a normal hyprland session if you're using SDDM

For me just using Wayland without uwsm still does not work for some reason.

system72 · 2025-12-04 16:13:48

sddm is probably hanging out in another tty, try seeing which one its in

kotirosvo · 2025-12-04 16:59:47

Thank you for the replies.

systemctl status sddm gives me

Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm-helper[1118]: [PAM] Authenticating...
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm-helper[1118]: [PAM] Preparing to converse...
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm-helper[1118]: [PAM] Conversation with 1 messages
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm-helper[1118]: [PAM] returning.
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm[827]: Authentication for user  "XXX"  successful
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm-helper[1118]: pam_unix(sddm:session): session opened for user XXX(uid=1000) by XXX(uid=0)
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm[827]: Auth: sddm-helper exited successfully
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm[827]: Greeter stopped. SDDM::Auth::HELPER_SUCCESS
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm-helper[1118]: Starting Wayland user session: "/usr/share/sddm/scripts/wayland-session" "Hyprland"
Dec 04 17:49:07 archlinux sddm[827]: Session started true
.

Could the problem be the third last line...? Or is this normal behavior? Sorry, I am still very new to this. I have tried to search the internet for an answer but to no avail. Chatting with AI tells me that:

The greeter stops after login and never restarts

This is a classic and well-known SDDM + Hyprland + Xorg-greeter bug.

When the greeter uses Xorg and the session uses Wayland, SDDM frequently fails to reactivate the greeter after the compositor exits — resulting in the blank screen with an underscore cursor.

but I am not sure how reliable this answer is.

seth · 2025-12-04 20:22:59

The status is meaningless
Ask the AI for its sources, but you may try https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SDDM#Wayland (you can also use hyprland as compositor)

kerosene8902 · 2025-12-07 13:27:00

seth wrote:

sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)
Don't do that?
uwsm is
A standalone Wayland session manager
- you're effectively running two DMs on top of each other.
Just start a normal hyprland session if you're using SDDM

uwsm-managed is recommended by hyprland https://wiki.hypr.land/Useful-Utilities/Systemd-start/:

Universal Wayland Session Manager wraps standalone Wayland compositors into a set of Systemd units and provides robust session management including environment, XDG autostart support, bi-directional binding with login session, and clean shutdown.

That being said, not using it does allow SDDM to work upon logout, but I lost all my autostart applications. It does not sound like a good solution.

It is probably something to do with SDDM configuration like your later post says. I did not have this issue when I was on Fedora with hyprland setup by jakoolit scripts. Just need to figure out how he setup SDDM differently.

seth · 2025-12-07 14:33:49

Maybe recommended but shows constantly up as "does not work", so … future.

I lost all my autostart applications

Lost how? What autostart applications?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hyprland#Autostart ???

system72 · 2025-12-07 14:45:52

perhaps they are talking about xdg-autostart

seth · 2025-12-07 15:15:43

https://systemd.io/DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENTS … ntegration ?

kerosene8902 · 2025-12-07 20:43:48

Yes, xdg-autostart... it is apparently handled by the uwsm managed hyprland, but I was able to get it to work without it by doing this:

https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland/discussions/3389

And my apologies, you are correct - Vaxry (hyprland dev) doesn't recommend uwsm unless you know what you are doing and have a specific use-case. So I stopped using it now that I got the autostart to work. I didn't want to have to move everything to an "exec-once=" in my config.

Last edited by kerosene8902 (2025-12-07 20:45:06)

tekstryder · 2025-12-07 21:00:20

kerosene8902 wrote:

uwsm-managed is recommended by hyprland

It absolutely isn't.

Supported != Recommended

The opposite in fact. @vaxry kinda hates the thing and has un-recommended it many times. From your link...

wiki.hypr.land wrote:

Please note uwsm is for advanced users and has its issues and additional quirks.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-11-27 06:08:10

sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#2 2025-11-29 11:15:45

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#3 2025-11-30 12:40:39

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#4 2025-11-30 16:31:32

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#5 2025-12-04 15:55:39

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#6 2025-12-04 16:13:48

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#7 2025-12-04 16:59:47

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#8 2025-12-04 20:22:59

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#9 2025-12-07 13:27:00

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#10 2025-12-07 14:33:49

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#11 2025-12-07 14:45:52

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#12 2025-12-07 15:15:43

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#13 2025-12-07 20:43:48

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#14 2025-12-07 21:00:20

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

#15 2025-12-07 21:07:44

Re: sddm doesn't 'restart' after quiting hyprland(uwsm-managed)

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