After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

Veldora · 2026-04-21 08:31:31

Hi there,

Yes, I know there is a troubleshooting guide about exact this issue and I've read it and applied the described steps:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GDM#GD … o_GNOME_50

However, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I searched through the formus and stumbled over a post in the Dustbin, which unfortunately was just some AI Slop.

I've created the file and populated it with the described content:

~# tree /etc/dconf/profile/
/etc/dconf/profile/
├── gdm
├── ibus
└── user

~# cat /etc/dconf/profile/gdm
user-db:user
system-db:gdm
file-db:/usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults

I've updated dconf as described in the troubleshooting-section of the GDM article:

dconf update

I rebooted the PC a first time and the issue was still there
Next: I have also set the ownership of gdm to gdm:gdm

~# ls -l /etc/dconf/profile/gdm
-rw-r--r-- 1 gdm gdm 72 Apr 21 09:23 /etc/dconf/profile/gdm

I have rebooted my device yet again and it still bypasses the login-greeter.

Am I missing something important?
I would like to output the whole journal, however, my journal is full of disclosed stuff, which isn't exactly meant to be seen by public eyes. And disclosing it with e.g. sed doesn't really work well.

Also: Is there an explanation why this happens? Why did GDM 49 behave differently to GDM 50?

Update: After further investigation, the dconf update command doesn't generate the gdm db-file, which should be located under

/etc/dconf/db/gdm

~# ls -l /etc/dconf/db/
total 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5547 Apr 21 15:03 ibus
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   40 Apr  9 11:27 ibus.d

Last edited by Veldora (2026-04-21 13:08:49)

Veldora · 2026-04-21 15:08:36

I'm exhausted of troubleshooting and I just feel very dumb now...
After reinstalling GDM by issuing

pacman -Runs gdm
pacman -Syu gdm

The issue was gone.
I tested to remove /etc/dconf/profile/gdm and reinstalled gdm again and the issue didn't appear again.

Even if the issue seems to be solved, I don't know what exactly happened.
So I would still be glad if someone with more Gnome know-how can explain what under the hood exactly happened with my machine.

seth · 2026-04-21 15:58:32

What exactly does "bypasses login-greeter" mean (symptom-wise)?
The referenced paragraph suggests a situation where you get the greeter, but it doesn't allow you to select a user.
Do you now have an (autogenerated) /etc/dconf/profile/gdm ?

Benjamin11 · 2026-04-21 20:32:13

It looks like I'm in a fairly similar situation. After upgrade to Gnome 50, the login screen remains empty, not showing any user to select or input components to enter a user. A few graphical components remain, like the date at the top and options to shut down and for wifi/bluetooth in the top right corner.

The landmark change in Gnome from 49 to 50 was the complete removal of X11 and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some remainder of configuration somewhere that is the culprit.

I did have Gnome configured to autologin after boot before the upgrade.

As per the troubleshooting instructions from the wiki, the file `/etc/dconf/profile/gdm` didn't exist on my system. Creating it with the proposed contents (and running `dconf update`) did not have any observable effect: Neither a db-file nor a change in behaviour for gdm.

Similar to Veldora, I've tried re-installing gdm (and even also Gnome) to no avail.

$ tree /etc/dconf/profile/
/etc/dconf/profile/
└── ibus

$ tree /etc/dconf/db/
/etc/dconf/db/
├── ibus
└── ibus.d
    └── 00-upstream-settings

The toubleshooting section says

Without this profile, gnome-shell does not launch in greeter mode and fails to display the user list.

However, explicitly starting the greeter mode (which I assume to be --mode=gdm, there are only two modes 'gdm' and 'user') leads to the same "empty user list" and hence unfunctional welcome screen:

gnome-shell --mode=gdm

Last edited by Benjamin11 (2026-04-21 20:41:05)

seth · 2026-04-21 20:41:55

Please post your complete system journal for the boot:

sudo journalctl -b | curl -s -H "Accept: application/json, */*" --upload-file - 'https://paste.c-net.org/'

The main reason I'd envision for this behavior would be https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x8 … tsservice/ being broken.

Veldora · Yesterday 06:28:11

seth wrote:

What exactly does "bypasses login-greeter" mean (symptom-wise)?

In my case I started my notebook and didn't get the user-selection screen at all. It instantly auto-started the gnome-shell with the gdm-greeter user, with no option to logout and select a different user.

seth wrote:

The referenced paragraph suggests a situation where you get the greeter, but it doesn't allow you to select a user.

Hm, according to this paragraph, this would be exactly my described issue, ain't it?

ArchWiki wrote:

the greeter may fail to show the user selection list entirely, launching only as the gdm-greeter user with no option to select or switch to any regular user account.

seth wrote:

Do you now have an (autogenerated) /etc/dconf/profile/gdm ?

No, I don't have an autogenerated /etc/dconf/profile/gdm

What I have also checked right now is, the checksum of the files gdm brings with it.
And it seems that the /usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults has been altered.

~# pacman -Qkk gdm
warning: gdm: /usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults (Modification time mismatch)
warning: gdm: /usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults (Size mismatch)
warning: gdm: /usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults (SHA256 checksum mismatch)
gdm: 515 total files, 1 altered file

After uninstalling gdm and reinstalling it, the output was:

~# pacman -Qkk gdm
gdm: 515 total files, 0 altered files

For me this seems like this file somehow got corrupted, which then caused my issues?

Last edited by Veldora (Yesterday 06:29:55)

seth · Yesterday 06:35:42

For me this seems like this file somehow got corrupted, which then caused my issues?

Looks like, you don't happen to still have the altered file?

Benjamin11 · Yesterday 08:56:49

Allright, so here is the boot journal: https://paste.c-net.org/TruthsCourting

(paste.c-net.org somehow borked the encoding it seems, but thats an unrelated issue)

For context I don't use systemd-homed.

You'll notice that I'm starting the gdm service manually, this is for demonstration purposes.

I've disabled the gdm service and am currently starting gnome-shell manually in order to have a (somewhat) working system, for now.

seth · Yesterday 11:39:22

Apr 22 10:48:05 pluto accounts-daemon[1301]: Unable to open /etc/tcb: No such file or directory
Apr 22 10:48:05 pluto gnome-session[1334]: unable to open file '/etc/dconf/db/gdm': Failed to open file â€œ/etc/dconf/db/gdmâ€: open() failed: No such file or directory; expect degraded performance

What does /usr/share/dconf/profile/gdm look like?

pacman -F /etc/dconf/profile/gdm
pacman -Qm

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/dconf-warni … s/181522/8 - anyone here using some derivate or 3rd party repo?
Basically: Why would gnome insist in the /etc located path?
Because there's also this weird issue around duplicate dbus services

ls -lR /etc/dbus-1/services

Sidebar:

Apr 22 10:47:34 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[226]: loadkeys: Unable to open file: US: No such file or directory
Apr 22 10:47:34 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[224]: '/usr/bin/loadkeys' failed with exit status 1.
Apr 22 10:47:34 archlinux systemd-vconsole-setup[224]: Configuration of first virtual console was skipped, ignoring remaining ones.
Apr 22 10:47:34 archlinux systemd[1]: systemd-vconsole-setup.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Apr 22 10:47:34 archlinux systemd[1]: systemd-vconsole-setup.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Apr 22 10:47:34 archlinux systemd[1]: Failed to start Virtual Console Setup.

your /etc/vconsole.conf seems bogus

Benjamin11 · Yesterday 13:43:04

Thanks for looking into it.

$ cat /usr/share/dconf/profile/gdm
user-db:user
file-db:/usr/share/gdm/greeter-dconf-defaults
$ pacman -F /etc/dconf/profile/gdm
$ pacman -Qm
asunder 3.0.2-1
claude-code 2.1.91-1
elm-bin 0.19.1-1
gnu-netcat 0.7.1-12
gtk2 2.24.33-5
libgdm-plymouth 43.0-1
openssl-1.1 1.1.1.w-9
rofi-debug 0.15.8-1
rofi-pass 2.0.2-4
scala 2.13.16-1
transcribe 9.42.0-1
wofi-pass v24.1.0-1
yay 12.5.7-1
$ pacman -Ql libgdm-plymouth
libgdm-plymouth /usr/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/gdm/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/gdm/gdm-client-glue.h
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/gdm/gdm-client.h
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/gdm/gdm-pam-extensions.h
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/gdm/gdm-sessions.h
libgdm-plymouth /usr/include/gdm/gdm-user-switching.h
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/girepository-1.0/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/girepository-1.0/Gdm-1.0.typelib
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/libgdm.so
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/libgdm.so.1
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/libgdm.so.1.0.0
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/pkgconfig/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/pkgconfig/gdm-pam-extensions.pc
libgdm-plymouth /usr/lib/pkgconfig/gdm.pc
libgdm-plymouth /usr/share/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/share/gir-1.0/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/share/gir-1.0/Gdm-1.0.gir
libgdm-plymouth /usr/share/glib-2.0/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/
libgdm-plymouth /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.login-screen.gschema.xml

I'm not on a derivate. I wonder whether the libgdm-plymouth is the culprit (hence I added the file listing). I was using gdm-plymouth instead of gdm before and had replaced it with gdm (or thought to have replaced it). I'll remove that as well and report about the progress.

Yes, I've also seen the other thread with the duplicate dbus services, but so far have not been able to make a connection.

seth · Yesterday 13:49:46

I wonder whether the libgdm-plymouth is the culprit

Metoo, notably since it's at v43 …
Try to replace it w/ libgdm

Benjamin11 · Yesterday 13:53:00

This worked. Unsurprisingly given the large version gap.

Replacing libgdm-plymouth with libgdm:

# pacman -S libgdm

Now the user list shows up again as expected. The automated login is gone, but that's a minor issue that I'm sure I'll be able to fix some other way.

Also thanks for pointing out the vconsole issue. The "Failed to start Virtual Console Setup." errors showed up a loooong time ago and previous attempts at fixing them have failed so I have stopped caring. I might give it another try.

Thank you!

Last edited by Benjamin11 (Yesterday 14:26:33)

Arch Linux

#1 2026-04-21 08:31:31

After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#2 2026-04-21 15:08:36

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#3 2026-04-21 15:58:32

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#4 2026-04-21 20:32:13

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#5 2026-04-21 20:41:55

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#6 Yesterday 06:28:11

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#7 Yesterday 06:35:42

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#8 Yesterday 08:56:49

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#9 Yesterday 11:39:22

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#10 Yesterday 13:43:04

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#11 Yesterday 13:49:46

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

#12 Yesterday 13:53:00

Re: After GNOME 50 Update - GDM bypasses login-greeter

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