[SOLVED] Arch installation works, but no GUI

Honest Abe · 04-16-2023, 08:32 AM

I am toying with the idea of moving my main workflow from Opensuse 15.4 which has started showing signs of aging. This was installed at least 4-5 years back and the accumulated tools, git installs etc are now slowly stagnating the system.
So, I thought of vanilla Arch and then installing the specific packages to set up the environment etc.

I am following tutorials from the official arch wiki and two more, https://www.learnlinux.tv/arch-linux...llation-guide/ and https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/ho...ll-arch-linux/

I managed to set up uefi multi boot (arch, Opensuse and win10) after a few stutters, I can boot into arch, but a graphical login (w/ KDE plasma, Wayland/xorg and sddm) is not possible. The graphical prompt, upon taking my user password, slowly going into black screen w/nothing kind of an unresponsive state and then reboots after a while.
I can however open a console and work in multi-user mode instead of graphical mode (ssh from outside works too) if I don't use the graphical terminal.
I do not see a traditional /var/log/messages but "journalctl -xe" has no errors. I don't see anything in the dmesg either.

Can you please help me identify and troubleshoot the GUI woes ?
Is there an error log about kde session that gets saved somewhere ?

Edited to add: I have already installed nvidia drivers (rtx 3060), xorg, sddm etc, just as stated in the user guides I referenced. They are same or similar to what the arch wiki suggests.

dosensuppe · 04-16-2023, 11:27 AM

How did you start xorg?
Did you start sddm using the daemon? systemctl start sddm

Quote:

The graphical prompt, upon taking my user password, slowly going into black screen w/nothing kind of an unresponsive state and then reboots after a while

You mean the whole system reboots?

dosensuppe · 04-16-2023, 11:31 AM

Take a look at journalctl. You can narrow the results more accurately. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/Journal

Honest Abe · 04-16-2023, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosensuppe

How did you start xorg?
Did you start sddm using the daemon? systemctl start sddm

You mean the whole system reboots?

Yes, sddm is enabled and 'status -l' did not reveal any errors.

Yes, after a while the machine reboots. I'll update with a more specific value later.

Honest Abe · 04-16-2023, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosensuppe

Take a look at journalctl. You can narrow the results more accurately. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/Journal

Thanks, I do understand that I need more information to troubleshoot this and a syslog would be handy. I'll update when I have that going.

teckk · 04-16-2023, 01:26 PM

Quote:

I am following tutorials from the official arch wiki and two more

Code:

lspci -k | curl -F 'file=@-' 0x0.st

teckk · 04-16-2023, 02:50 PM

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=285077
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=284249

Honest Abe · 04-17-2023, 06:31 AM

I did reference the arch wiki. The other two links I gave were merely for reference and I watched the youtube video of arch installation by LearnLinuxTV to familiarize myself with the task.

I also stated that I do have a rtx 3060. My CPU is a ryzen 5800x which does not come with on-board graphics.

error logs from journal --
"journalctl --grep=kde"

Code:

-- Boot 66dc39e8e328473d8cd073b3bcd0a12a --
Apr 17 14:44:36 abarch dbus-daemon[729]: [session uid=1000 pid=729] Activating service name='org.kde.KSplash' requested by ':1.0' (uid=1000 pid=717 comm="/usr/bin/startplasma-wayland")
Apr 17 14:44:36 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Window Manager...
Apr 17 14:44:36 abarch systemd[692]: Started KDE Window Manager.
Apr 17 14:44:36 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Config Module Initialization...
Apr 17 14:44:36 abarch dbus-daemon[729]: [session uid=1000 pid=729] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.impl.portal.desktop.kde' unit='plasma-xdg-desktop-portal-kde.service' requested by ':1.6' (uid=1000 pid=748 comm="/>
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Started KDE Config Module Initialization.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Session Management Server...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Daemon...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch ksmserver[846]: org.kde.kf5.ksmserver: Cannot connect to the X server
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd-coredump[862]: [🡕] Process 849 (kded5) of user 1000 dumped core.
                                              
                                              Stack trace of thread 849:
                                              #0  0x00007f89e3aa08ec n/a (libc.so.6 + 0x878ec)
                                              #1  0x00007f89e3a51ea8 raise (libc.so.6 + 0x38ea8)
                                              #2  0x00007f89e3a3b53d abort (libc.so.6 + 0x2253d)
                                              #3  0x00007f89e409fede _ZNK14QMessageLogger5fatalEPKcz (libQt5Core.so.5 + 0x9fede)
                                              #4  0x00007f89e473d9c5 _ZN22QGuiApplicationPrivate25createPlatformIntegrationEv (libQt5Gui.so.5 + 0x13d9c5)
                                              #5  0x00007f89e473e009 _ZN22QGuiApplicationPrivate21createEventDispatcherEv (libQt5Gui.so.5 + 0x13e009)
                                              #6  0x00007f89e429364b _ZN23QCoreApplicationPrivate4initEv (libQt5Core.so.5 + 0x29364b)
                                              #7  0x00007f89e473e0b9 _ZN22QGuiApplicationPrivate4initEv (libQt5Gui.so.5 + 0x13e0b9)
                                              #8  0x00007f89e4f75e0e _ZN19QApplicationPrivate4initEv (libQt5Widgets.so.5 + 0x175e0e)
                                              #9  0x000055b1283d3c86 n/a (kded5 + 0x6c86)
                                              #10 0x00007f89e3a3c790 n/a (libc.so.6 + 0x23790)
                                              #11 0x00007f89e3a3c84a __libc_start_main (libc.so.6 + 0x2384a)
                                              #12 0x000055b1283d40c5 n/a (kded5 + 0x70c5)
                                              ELF object binary architecture: AMD x86-64
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: plasma-kded.service: Main process exited, code=dumped, status=6/ABRT
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch qdbus[873]: Service 'org.kde.kcminit' does not exist.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: plasma-kded.service: Failed with result 'core-dump'.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Failed to start KDE Daemon.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Configuration Module Initialization (Phase 1)...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Failed to start KDE Session Management Server.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Dependency failed for KDE Plasma Workspace Core.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Dependency failed for KDE Plasma Workspace.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch qdbus[896]: Service 'org.kde.ksmserver' does not exist.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Connect...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Plasma Workspace...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE PolicyKit Authentication Agent...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting KDE Session Restoration...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Starting Xdg Desktop Portal For KDE...
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: Failed to start KDE Configuration Module Initialization (Phase 1).
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: app-org.kde.discover.notifier@autostart.service: Skipped due to 'exec-condition'.
Apr 17 14:44:37 abarch systemd[692]: app-org.kde.plasma\x2dwelcome@autostart.service: Skipped due to 'exec-condition'.

During installation, I had installed these. There might be redundant entries -

Code:

pacman -Syu xorg plasma plasma-wayland-session kde-applications pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa xorg-xinit sddm xorg-server nvidia nvidia-lts nvidia-utils

I do see that nvidia card has been detected.

Code:

[root@abarch ~]# lspci | grep -i vga
08:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GA106 [GeForce RTX 3060 Lite Hash Rate] (rev a1)
[root@abarch ~]# nvidia-smi
Mon Apr 17 15:14:58 2023       
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 530.41.03              Driver Version: 530.41.03    CUDA Version: 12.1     |
|-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                  Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf            Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                      |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060         Off| 00000000:08:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   39C    P8               13W / 170W|     92MiB / 12288MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                      |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                                         
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                            |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                            GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                             Usage      |
|=======================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A       645      G   /usr/lib/Xorg                                35MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A       666      G   /usr/bin/sddm-greeter                        54MiB |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
[root@abarch ~]# grep -i nvidia /proc/modules 
nvidia_drm 77824 3 - Live 0xffffffffc0966000 (POE)
nvidia_modeset 1486848 6 nvidia_drm, Live 0xffffffffc8942000 (POE)
nvidia_uvm 3014656 0 - Live 0xffffffffc4c4a000 (POE)
nvidia 60907520 270 nvidia_modeset,nvidia_uvm, Live 0xffffffffc0f0b000 (POE)
video 65536 1 nvidia_modeset, Live 0xffffffffc053f000
[root@abarch ~]#

The wiki links that you provided revealed that I missed egl-wayland. Installing it did not change the behavior. The system opens the kde prompt, I type in my password. A bit of text flashes which looks like it tries to start services (networkmanager GUI system tray applet ?) and does dark screen 7 seconds later. Since the GPU does not have any output signal , the monitor goes black too (I can still switch to other video input ex: a laptop screen on the monitor, so monitor is not a problem.) and after about 30 seconds, the system reboots itself.

So I setup rsyslog as directed from wiki (my first AUR compile)

Code:

[root@abarch ~]# grep -Ev "^#|^$" /etc/rsyslog.conf
$ModLoad imuxsock # provides support for local system logging
$ModLoad imklog   # provides kernel logging support
$ActionFileDefaultTemplate RSYSLOG_TraditionalFileFormat
$FileOwner root
$FileGroup root
$FileCreateMode 0640
$DirCreateMode 0755
$Umask 0022
$WorkDirectory /var/spool/rsyslog
$IncludeConfig /etc/rsyslog.d/*.conf
auth,authpriv.*			/var/log/auth.log
daemon.*			/var/log/daemon.log
kern.*				/var/log/kern.log
mail.*				/var/log/mail.log
user.*				/var/log/user.log
*.info;mail.none;authpriv.none;cron.none                /var/log/messages
*.emerg				:omusrmsg:*
daemon.*;mail.*;\
	news.err;\
	*.=debug;*.=info;\
	*.=notice;*.=warn	|/dev/console

and was able to capture a huge amount of logs -
https://pastebin.com/e7g2vjLL

I know its long and tedious, but I do not know enough about KDE/wayland/xorg as I have never had the opportunity to troubleshoot these stuff.

dosensuppe · 04-17-2023, 10:34 AM

Did you install the full plasma package? Install the plasma-meta package. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE
Otherwise try starting xorg by itself using startx. Add exec startplasma-x11 to your empty ~/.xinitrc file. Create it if it doesn't exist. https://wiki.archlinux.de/title/Desk...e_Loginmanager
You can also try another login manager like lightdm. Start it using the daemon - systemctl start lightdm.

dosensuppe · 04-17-2023, 10:53 AM

Also note the time when the system reboots and show the journalctl output. Usually I don't think a simple userspace issue should lead to a complete reboot. (or it's a behaviour of KDE?)

Honest Abe · 04-18-2023, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosensuppe

Did you install the full plasma package? Install the plasma-meta package. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE

At this point I have both plasma and plasma-meta packages installed. No changes. The arch wiki says to install either of them.

from arch wiki

Quote:

Install the plasma-meta meta-package or the plasma group.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosensuppe

Otherwise try starting xorg by itself using startx. Add exec startplasma-x11 to your empty ~/.xinitrc file. Create it if it doesn't exist. https://wiki.archlinux.de/title/Desk...e_Loginmanager

I created that file,

Code:

[anirban@abarch ~]$ cat .xinitrc 
exec startplasma-x11

After this, I logged in from a text terminal and 'startx' worked and I was presented with the familiar KDE desktop.

This made me wonder if I could now select plasma-x11 from the drop down of the usual graphical login screen. (upto this point, I was trying plasma-wayland, since that works flawlessly on openSUSE and linux mint).
A reboot later, I gave this a shot and it worked as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dosensuppe

You can also try another login manager like lightdm. Start it using the daemon - systemctl start lightdm.

Thanks, since plasma-x11 is working at the moment, I'll stay on it.

I also found this on arch wiki - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#Starting_Plasma

Quote:

:
Note: Although it is possible to launch Plasma under Wayland, there are some missing features and known problems. See Wayland Showstoppers for a list of issues and the Plasma on Wayland workboard for the current state of development. Use Xorg for the most complete and stable experience.

Makes me wonder if anyone found a solution yet..

I still have a lot of work to do. Compiling rsyslog was a time consuming activity and I am missing zypper/apt/nala like streamlined dependency handling, but I knew what I was getting into.

For now, I would like to stay on the linux-lts kernel , have a backup regular kernel in case I break things.

dosensuppe · 04-18-2023, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Honest Abe

I still have a lot of work to do. Compiling rsyslog was a time consuming activity and I am missing zypper/apt/nala like streamlined dependency handling, but I knew what I was getting into.

Do you not use an Aur helper?
I recommend trizen. Install base-devel before installing it.

dosensuppe · 04-18-2023, 01:20 PM

You can also spare yourself the display manager alltogether and put this in your .bashrc, so every time you log into tty1 x is started automatically;

Code:

if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
    startx
    logout
fi

teckk · 04-18-2023, 01:51 PM

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Start_X_at_login

Quote:

Compiling rsyslog was a time consuming activity and I am missing zypper/apt/nala like streamlined dependency handling

pacman is the package manager for arch. It takes care of all dependencies.

Quote:

Do you not use an Aur helper?

New users should stay away from AUR helpers. Instead lean how makepkg works.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/rsyslog
https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.g...UILD?h=rsyslog

Also see:
pacman -Si metalog
pacman -Si syslog-ng

Honest Abe · 04-20-2023, 05:37 AM

Thanks all. Looks like I have it going for now.

@teckk, what I really meant was AUR could have been a repository onto itself (like epel or codeready in Redhat) and we could save a bit of time. The makepkg gives me an archaic feeling and if any dependency needs another package from AUR, we go into a loop of dependency hell.

I know I'm thinking wishfully and mean no disrespect to arch users or arch's way of doing things. Nor do I mean distro X is better than arch. It just means a bit more time configuring and a lot of factors to consider for the kernel upgrade. Perhaps with time and patience I'll get accustomed.