MX Linux no longer boots to login; TTY only

Other Distributions
1

I left a week ago to travel to my mom’s house. When disconnecting my laptop (MX Linux 23.5 ahs) I powered it back up without the external monitor and noticed it showed the splash screen, but then it sat at a blank, non-blinking cursor on a black screen. No soft boot would work to restart. I figured I would fix it once I got there.

It is a dual boot with Garuda OS, and Garuda boots and works fine. So video card is not out. I do have both internal & external GPUs.

No matter what I tried, how many topics searched, including here on ItsFOSS, nothing has fixed this. I have used Timeshift restore from the day this happened and continuing to restore all the way back to May 24 and still the same thing.

I do not know much about TTY, but thought I would see if that was possible from this unknown screen. Ctrl-Alt-F2, and was asked to login. I did. But I had no idea what to do to resolve the issue from there. What commands should I run?

From the working GRUB menu, I have chosen advanced and every kernel available without success. I have used “e” to add nomodeset before booting, this also results in the same black screen. I have tried live session with Boot repair, Grub repair, and nothing fixes this.

Obviously, it is a video issue that I cannot advance to the login screen, correct? But I have no idea why it was working fine the day I left home. I did updates, and remember there were kernel updates, but falling back to an older one should have fixed it if that was the issue.

Other than the updates, I simply powered down the laptop and unplugged it from the hdmi external monitor and only rebooted it without an external monitor attached as I needed to test if I should bring the power cord, since I have a USB C power delivery port, figured I could use the same USB C power adapter from other laptop for this one–reducing an extra power cable in transport. It was then that the issue first occurred.

As I said, I did not have time to deal with it then, but a week at my mom’s trying everything I can think of, has not yielded success.

Does anyone have any tips for resolving this?

Thanks,
Sheila

2 Likes
2

That blank screen means the Login Manager has failed… possible reasons

  • X11 has a problem
  • the login manager daemon ( ie lightdm, sddm, gdm or whatever) has a problem
  • the video driver has a problem
  • the screen has a problem … you eliminated that

To get past that blank screen, you can boot it so temporarily disable the login manager…find /bin/sddm ( or whatever) and rename it
mv /bin/sddm /bin/sddm.hide
Then boot and you will get a console prompt
Login there… and what happens… does X11 work?
If X11 works, you have eliminated X11 and video driver… so reinstall the login manager
Its a process of elimination… good luck

3 Likes
3

Sorry to hear the problems. It sure seems like you tried reasonable things.

I am not sure of the syntax off the top of my head but thought maybe you could arrange to do the equivalent of ‘init 6’. I think that would start a normal session but no graphical interface.

From there you can check the X windows or whatever settings. Those seem like they would have been restored too though.

Of course you may be able to see and even adjust those settings via Garuda or a USB boot. Maybe a disk check would be good if you haven’t tried that yet.

Not sure I will be much help. Just some thoughts.

5 Likes
4

Beats me. So I check in usr/bin and find lightdm. Great now to rename/hide. So I boot into Garuda to do it faster than TTY console.

But even though I found the file “lightdm” in console, could not see it in MX root file system files. 4 other lightdm files, like lightdm-gtk-greeter, etc. but no plain “lightdm.”

So guess I will reboot back to TTY and do it the hard way. BOOM! MS Login appears.

Of couse now I am back to May 24 from my TS restore, so going back to June 8, the day I left and the last good TS snapshot.

So I never got to reinstall lightdm, but now it works? Sheesh. How does that happen?

Thanks @nevj!
Sheila

4 Likes
5

I think disconnecting the external monitor did something ( or failed to do something) to the config file(s). Dont ask me which config file.

2 Likes
6

Oops. I just remembered. Before I did a search in TTY console, I wasn’t sure which login manager I use in MX. So I figured if I did sudo dpkg-reconfigure XXXX trying first gdm, not installed; then lightdm. It had some output and had an error, but that is what made me know I used lightdm. From there I searched for the file.

So maybe the dpkg reconfigure fixed it in console? Would be good to know if that is a solution.

Sheila

2 Likes
7

You will get a chance to find out. It will happen again. It it was me , there would be a huge problem remembering what was the fix.
Also debconf show may be useful

1 Like
8

Oh, please, no! I was lost without my daily driver MX all week. Had to make do with Garuda on this one and couldn’t really use my other laptop as much, because it is Nix OS and I had not yet setup some programs there and did not have time to do it while I was at Mom’s.

I kept thinking it must have something to do with unplugging from the ext monitor, but it just did not seem likely.

Restored my 06.08.25 snapshot and all is well with the world again. :person_cartwheeling: :man_cartwheeling: :woman_cartwheeling:

Sheila

3 Likes
9

Did you unplug it live or while turned off?
Hard to tell what is live in a laptop, the battery is always there.

2 Likes
10

It was powered off and then I disconnected all plugs so that I could pack it. Even though it has a battery, I always assumed a laptop powered off was just that. Since I keep an ext HDD & a Ventoy USB with all my Linux distros on it plugged in, I made sure it was off before removing those. Then as I said, running on battery alone, I took it to a desk and turned it back on to see if it would show the battery charging while plugged into my USB C power adapter. But at that point, the black screen with non-blinking cursor appeared. So I never got to see if it was charging.

I then took it back over to the monitor and tried plugging it back into it with the HDMI (which I had left hanging out of the back–same cable) and still the login screen would not appear.

That’s when I shut it down and packed it since I did not have time to resolve it. Brought my Ventoy with me so I could boot a live MX session if needed, as well as the ext HDD where all of my TS snapshots are stored.

I just don’t understand how all of those Timeshift snapshots or booting a different kernel could not fix it.

Thanks,
Sheila

2 Likes
11

Strange. Seems to suggest something to do with hardware and charging via usb port.
You did everything right as far as I can see.

4 Likes
12

I have an update on this issue that needs resolving. I use my laptop with the external monitor and seldom look at the laptop screen as I keep it half closed: open enough for air flow, but lowered out of sight.

This morning, I noticed that the laptop screen itself is still showing the exact screen when I had this issue: black screen with TTY cursor.

So I went into display settings and only the HDMI external monitor is listed. There was no option for the internal display.

Other than that setting, is there something else I can do to make sure my laptop screen is available? Xorg.conf only shows the external monitor. I tried debconf show but got:

Can't exec "show": No such file or directory at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base/IPC/Open3.pm line 176.
open2: exec of show failed: No such file or directory at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 59.

I have to travel back to my mom’s next weekend and do not want to have this issue again while there.

Thanks,
Sheila

1 Like
13

I have never done dual monitors.
If you google this
xorg settings for laptop external monitor and internal monitor
you get some sort of overview
and it seems to say that the internal screen will autodetect so does not have to be in xorg.conf.
xorg.conf is the original Unix way of configuring a screen. It is seen when the xserver starts. The modern way is for the kernel to detect the screen and load drivers when the kernel boots. I dont know if the kernel can autodetect an external screen. I suspect not, and that is probably why you have an xorg.conf file. for the external monitor.
Now, I dont know the details, but I think you need to understand what is doing what here… so … an experiment… if you hide xorg.conf then boot, what happens… I bet it only uses the internal screen.
and
if you put xorg.conf back, and boot with kernel boot parameter -nomodeset… i bet it boots with the external screen only.

If I am right… the kernel is setting up the internal screen and xorg is setting up the external screen.

If you understand that much, you may be able to fix it… or at least know where to look

Sorry , my experience is lacking here.

4 Likes
14

Both the splash screen and login screen have displayed on the external monitor for quite some time. I guess I just did not notice that at some point it stopped displaying on the laptop screen.

That seems to have fixed it. Hiding xorg.conf file upon reboot, nothing displayed on the ext monitor–only laptop screen. Once I logged in, had to go into settings and change display. The ext monitor was “disabled” and I enabled it and applied “mirroring” and then both displays worked.

Whew. Thanks @nevj

Another note for the Linux notebook in case this ever happens again.

Sheila

4 Likes
15

Enjoy your trip to your mom’s

3 Likes
16

Dual (and even triple) monitors works out of the box for me on Pop!_OS 22.04 - I don’t have to do anything - other than arrange the layout in the GUI…

I don’t know if you can use “startx” on MX Linux - my DM (gdm I think?) is broken on Pop!_OS so I have disabled it and I login to TTY with my user account and run “startx” and it loads Gnome DE…

2 Likes
17

Thanks @daniel.m.tripp I did not know I could do that or I would have been into my DE all last week. It took me half the week to think I could test that white cursor and try Ctrl_alt-F2 and I was in shock when it presented the login.

I will try that and see if startx takes me to desktop. Never having used TTY I was unsure of commands available compared to bash.

Sheila

1 Like
18

The EXACT same commands as you’d do in a Terminal app in your DE… The exact same shell… i.e. make sure you use your user-name (e.g. not root :smiley: )

3 Likes
19

Yes. It is called startxfce4. There is a startx too, but that starts twm… you can modify it , of course.
@Sheila_Flanagan , you might note this.

3 Likes
20

Now in the Linux notebook TTY file. Question, when I saw the commands for dpkg-reconfigure I noted “gdm3” as one of the suggestions.

Do those numbers reference versions? So would xfce4 at some point become xfce5, etc.?

Just want to notate that if the command will later change.

Thanks!

Well, now I know. I guess I was thinking of the limited bash editing you can do in GRUB.

Thanks @daniel.m.tripp

Sheila

2 Likes