Can't get past login screen after 20 March update

[molecule-eye]

I installed a 20 March daily build fresh and it worked fine. I updated it later that day and now I can't get past the login screen. I enter my password and it just sits there, regardless of whether Plasma or Failsafe is chosen for the shell.

Unfortunately I can't update it over wired ethernet since I don't have a USB-Ethernet dongle. Any fix for this? (GPU and CPU are Intel Ivybridge.)

[Qqmike]

It is not an issue with .Xauthority, is it?

Could you remove .Xauthority and try it?

My cut-and-paste notes on this:

Remove: ~/.Xauthority
It will be regenerated upon re-booting.

You don't need to boot into recovery mode to remove .Xauthority. You can remove it from normal boot:

1. when the login screen is visible, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (to change to a virtual text terminal)
2. login with your user credentials
3. run 'rm ~/.Xauthority'
4. logout from terminal ( "exit" or Ctrl+d)
5. Switch back to the login screen (Ctrl+Alt+F7)

(If your home partition isn't mounted automatically when you boot into recovery mode (command "mount" will list active mounts), you can mount it by running "mount /home")

Or, you can rename it and re-boot:

cd ~
mv .Xauthority .Xauthority.old
sudo shutdown -r now


You must be at a terminal.

If you can get to the GRUB menu when you re-boot, then:

Press the "e" key to edit your boot entry, look for "quiet splash" and change it to "text" and then continue the boot. That should do it, but not save it that way -- just hit the re-boot option.

[molecule-eye]

Thanks for your message. Unfortunately removing .Xauthority didn't work.

Some possibly useful facts? tty1 doesn't work but tty4 does. After putting in my password and hitting enter at the sddm login screen, the cursor turns into an X.

[vinnywright]

try the things in this thread and the link in this thread .

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...unched-at-boot

VINNY

[jalmargyyk]

I had to chroot from my opensuse installation to get things working after 20.3 ( or maybe it was 19.3) updates. Once you've chrooted to the broken Vivid installation you can do apt-get update/dist-upgrade.

Obviously you can use live cd for this as well.

Oh, I just noticed that you got to the login screen (my boot process stopped to btrfs mounting). I think the previously mentioned sddm solution should work for you.

[molecule-eye]

I could get to the sddm login screen, so that was irrelevant. In any case, I figured out what as wrong after reinstalling a few times. I am booting from an SSD which is host to the root and home directories. I have another internal disk that I've added to fstab to mount on boot. If I change the wallpaper to one on the non-root/home disk, the system will boot to a black screen with the compositor running, but no access to any program whatsoever. Krunner works but gives no results for any query and the settings are not accessible from the gui button. Very strange.

[RobinH]

I could get to the sddm login screen, so that was irrelevant. In any case, I figured out what as wrong after reinstalling a few times. I am booting from an SSD which is host to the root and home directories. I have another internal disk that I've added to fstab to mount on boot. If I change the wallpaper to one on the non-root/home disk, the system will boot to a black screen with the compositor running, but no access to any program whatsoever. Krunner works but gives no results for any query and the settings are not accessible from the gui button. Very strange.

Hi, I may have got myself into the same problems. I login to sddm and just see a black screen. How did you get out of this? Do you need to reset some setting?

[molecule-eye]

Hi, I may have got myself into the same problems. I login to sddm and just see a black screen. How did you get out of this? Do you need to reset some setting?

Is the compositor running? Can you access krunner?

I tried removing my ~/.config/ and ~/.kde/ folders to no avail. Perhaps there is another folder/file that needs to be erased and recreated to fix things, but if so, I have no idea which it is. I ended up reinstalling the OS from scratch since it took less time than searching for a solution. If you find a solution, please do post it here--good luck!

[RobinH]

Is the compositor running? Can you access krunner?

I tried removing my ~/.config/ and ~/.kde/ folders to no avail. Perhaps there is another folder/file that needs to be erased and recreated to fix things, but if so, I have no idea which it is. I ended up reinstalling the OS from scratch since it took less time than searching for a solution. If you find a solution, please do post it here--good luck!

Oh, I thought you figured it out. I spent the last two days configuring my new computer and now I got this bug.
Krunner is running but doesn't respond to any commands and the compositor probably is running too - sometimes Korganizer jumps up and it's got the decorations but no effects. It seems it just got stuck loading some part of the frameworks, but I have no idea how to diagnose that. I tried creating a new user, which should remove any stupid settings, but it doesn't get any further.

[dgvirtual]

Thanks for your message. Unfortunately removing .Xauthority didn't work.

Some possibly useful facts? tty1 doesn't work but tty4 does. After putting in my password and hitting enter at the sddm login screen, the cursor turns into an X.

I have exactly this problem today. The system was up to date and working yesterday, and today - boom, I cannot get past the sddm login screen with the same symptoms (the cursor either turns into an x or disappears completely). Tried using slim and lxdm, both did not work.

I can login at tty1 in console. Is there a way to start kde directly from console? It used to be possible with sudo startx or sudo startkde, but it does not work in this case.

[RobinH]

Nothing I tried worked either. I tried making a new user or even copying the home folder from a fresh install to get the default settings.
I gave up and went back to Plasma 4 (Linux Mint 17 KDE). Just can't afford wasting days on testing distros and lose my system in the end. There are just way too many bugs in Plasma 5. Plasma 4 is rock solid and I'd even say it looks better than flat Breeze. The only thing I miss is the new Krunner.