Fedora Hangs on Black Cursor After Boot

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1

Hi everyone,
today, my Fedora got updated by the GNOME software. And during boot, it said the offline update process is stuck since 5min. So I Ctrl-Alt-Del’d and booted again. Since then I can’t log in graphically, only by accessing a TTY other than TTY1. It’s with gdm, and output: [108.384004] traps: gdm [3615] trap int3 ip:7f847e134588 sp:7ffd69a69030 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.8400.3[46588,7f847e0ee000+a5000].
I have tried:

  • updating system, complains about nvidia conflicts (but I have Intel card)
  • installing and allowing lightdm instead of gdm
  • restarting gdm
  • booting into old kernel
    But nothing seems to work, and I haven’t made any backups. Any advice what to do next?
    Thanks,
    George
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2

That does not make sense to me. Gnome is not going to take over your computer and initiate an update?
Tell us what happened… It sounds like some update has ruined your GUI… black cursor after boot means the login manager has failed … probably because the Xserver is unable to draw the flash screen.
Can you start Gnome by hand with startx?

Do you have a backup?
The easiest thing is always to go back to last backup… but you dont have one.
I would remove all of gnome and X11 ( or wayland) and reinstall them.

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Perhaps the update failed when it was updating gdm or glib. Could you post the logs of the update?

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It’s not, GNOME Software > Updates > Include System > Update, then Restart, Apply Updates on Boot.

No. A fatal server error, giving up. Seems like no unwind info found.

offline-update-competed (not completed funny)
[PackageKit Offline Update Results]
Success=false
ErrorCode=failed-initialization
ErrorDetails=The transaction did not complete

The output that the log provided, seems it was running dnf update:
[311/319]

udisks2-btrfs-0:2.10.90-3.fc42.x86_64

[312/319] nvidia-gpu-firmware-B:20250788-1.fc42.noarch

[313/3191

vte291-gtk1-0:0.80.3-1.fc42.x86_64

[314/319]

virtiofsd-0:1.13.2-1.fc42:x86_64

[315/319]

waydroid-selinux-0:1.5.4-1.fc42.noarch

[316/319]

waydroid-0:1.5.4-1.fc12.noarch

[317/319]

which-0:2.23-2.fc42.x86_64

[318/319] yelp-xs1-0:42.4-1.fc42. noarch

[319/319] xorg-x11-server-Xwayland -0:24.1.8-1.fc42.x86_64

[319/319] Gesamt

Transaktion wird ausgeführt

Transaktion fehlgeschlagen: Rpm Transaktion fehlgeschlagen.

Datei /usr/lib/firmuare/nvidia/ad103 aus der Installation von nvidia-gpu-firmware-20250708-1.fc42.noarch kollidiert mit der Datei aus dem Paket linux-firmuare-20250311-1.fc42.noarch

Datei /usr/lib/firmware/nvidia/ad107 aus der Installation von nvidia-gpu-firmware noarch kollidiert mit der Datei aus dem Paket linux-firmware-20250509-1.fc42.noarch

Datei usr/bin/evince-previewer aus der Installation von evince-48.1-1.fc42.x86_64 kollidiert mit der Datei aus dem Paket evince-previewer-48.0-2.fc42:x86_64

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So, an update: I removed the conflicting packages and started the upgrade, it works now. And luckily the login screen shows up after GDM reinstall, so problem solved :slight_smile:

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It may be a good idea to start doing regular backups.
A simple package clash should not destroy your system like that.

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But where to store them? I don’t have an USB drive.

8

Time to invest …

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USB drives are cheap and readily available.
It is a worthwhile investment.
I use 6Tb WD drive which is self powered.
Get an HD not an SSD for backup.

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Correction: I have around 15 at home, but all of them are occupied with another distro.

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It might be worth getting one large one.

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In size or in capacity size?

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You need somewhere to dump huge backup images .
I use Clonezilla, and it compresses when it images a disk, but the file sizes are still immense.
I did my main 4Tb ssd tonight… it took about 2 hours.

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