eMachine doesn't boot to GUI

[SenileOtaku]

Hello,

Requirements:

I have Searched the forum for my issue and found nothing related or helpful
I have checked the Resources category (Resources Index)
I have reviewed the Wiki for relevant information
I have read the the Release Notes and Errata

OpenMandriva Lx version:

openmandriva-6.0-plasma6.x11-slim.x86_64

Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):

KDE Plasma 6

Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant):

Booted and installed the Plasma6 Slim edition (x11, x86_64). The Live ISO booted and went to the desktop with no issue. Installed to a clean drive (zeroed out partition table beforehand). Rebooting to the default GRUB setting, the system never loads the GUI (even leaving it for 30 minutes). If I boot the system into console mode, it will boot to command line fine, and I can start the GUI with “startx”

Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…):

eMachines E528 laptop, 6G memory, 120G HDD

lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801IBM/IEM (ICH9M/ICH9M-E) 4 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
07:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (rev c0)

This is a test machine, so I can tweak or reinstall as needed

boot.log.txt (21.6 KB)

[zeroability]

Did you modify it from a default install in any way?

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Perhaps when in terminal try sudo systemctl enable sddm.

[SenileOtaku]

@zeroability

Did you modify it from a default install in any way?

No, just answered the setup questions

[zeroability]

If it’s an older ISO (such as sourceforge, sometimes), try updating. There were some things that got resolved.

[SenileOtaku]

@ben79

Perhaps when in terminal try sudo systemctl enable sddm.

No change. Tried a sudo systemctl start sddm as well (from terminal F2), didn’t do anything either, or ... stop sddm.

From the boot log it may be failing in Plymouth?

[SenileOtaku]

@zeroability

If it’s an older ISO (such as sourceforge, sometimes), try updating. There were some things that got resolved.

First thing I tried once I got it into the command line mode (I forgot to add that in my original post).

[zeroability]

I’m going to blame the known intel driver bug, then. You can try the server kernel and report back if that resolves it. @bero might know why that is a problem in the desktop kernel.

[SenileOtaku]

@zeroability

I’m going to blame the known intel driver bug, then. You can try the server kernel and report back if that resolves it.

No change with the server kernel (presuming “kernel-server” was the only package needed. I checked that grub was loading kernel-server)

[zeroability]

You will have to pull logs (probably with journalctl). This post tends to cover the commands:

How to get better results when posting about problems

All OpenMandriva contributors are unpaid part time volunteers. There are no employees being paid to help you. All OpenMandriva contributors have more on our “To Do” and “Want To Do” lists than we can actually do. So when someone stops what they are doing to help a user with an issue that stops progress on other work that we are doing. Because of this we won’t hesitate to ask users to do some work themselves to get an issue resolved. This means RTFM yourself and do your own internet searches. S…

[SenileOtaku]

@zeroability

You will have to pull logs (probably with journalctl).

OK, will check in the morning, I need to get to bed,

[bruno]

Maybe it is the same problem as mine… you can try my solution…

Questions about boot

Fiddling with system settings… I was in this situation: [Schermata_20250529_211103] [Schermata_20250529_211118] And I changed to this one: [Schermata_20250529_211155] [Schermata_20250529_211211] I don’t want it to be the time and tiredness but it seems to work (at least with kernel-server and x11) On both notebooks A and B

[SenileOtaku]

@zeroability

You will have to pull logs (probably with journalctl).

INXI:

CPU:
  Info: single core model: Intel Celeron 900 bits: 64 cache: L2: 1024 KiB
  Speed (MHz): 2190 min/max: N/A core: 1: 2190
  Flags: acpi aperfmperf apic arch_perfmon bts clflush cmov constant_tsc
    cpuid cx16 cx8 de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts fpu fxsr lahf_lm lm mca mce
    mmx monitor msr mtrr nopl nx pae pat pbe pdcm pebs pge pni pse pse36 pti
    rep_good sep sse sse2 ssse3 syscall tm tm2 tsc vme xsave xtpr

let me try uploading journalctl output to another reply. The system thinks a 2.9M file is over 4M

[SenileOtaku]

Journalctl:
(the reply here wouldn’t take the file)

e528.journal.txt | Powered by Box

@bruno

Maybe it is the same problem as mine… you can try my solution…

Setting sddm to autologin as in your example worked, but still need to find out why. It’s not a good workaround from a security view.

[bruno]

Setting sddm to autologin as in your example worked, but still need to find out why. It’s not a good workaround from a security view.

It is true.

[SenileOtaku]

So I’m wondering if I should pull some debug data for Plymouth and/or sddm, which seem to be the two possible failures. Since enabling an autologon lets the system proceed to the Plasma6 desktop, I’m wondering if the autologon completely bypasses sddm or is it still running part of that display manager.
Just to check that it wasn’t just a matter of sddm having to run correctly once, I disabled autologon. And it returned to the prior state of not loading the UI.

[SenileOtaku]

Should I keep this machine’s configuration active? I was waiting to see if anyone needed me to gather debug info.

[ben79 (Ben Bullard)]

Try talking to OM devs by filing a bug report or at OM Chat.

[zeroability]

@SenileOtaku

Should I keep this machine’s configuration active? I was waiting to see if anyone needed me to gather debug info.

Just to rule it out, try installing the full ISO, and not the Slim one.

[SenileOtaku]

No change. Installing the full Plasma6 (as well as the LXQT iso) fail to load the GUI.

From the blank screen I get after the initial boot process finishes, I switched to the second terminal window (-) and ran ‘sudo systemctl restart sddm’, which brought up the GUI. However, if I run ‘sudo systemctl stop sddm’, the first terminal window will still be blank (it doesn’t drop to a command line login) but ‘sudo systemctl start sddm’ in the second terminal will start the GUI.