Hey,
I've been daily driving Linux now for about 3 months, debian (Ubuntu) first for about 2 months and now i switched to Arch (Garuda) so i don't become to comfortable with apt (and debian) and rather learn stuff on Arch with pacman from the beginning.
Because i really liked GNOME on Ubuntu (yes i tried KDE, not my thing) i choose the GNOME Manjaro version first and fresh installed it... first start: my Login screen was nuked and i couldn't log in (grey screen with the top bar loaded but no login). After a lot of google searches i couldn't really get it to work... so i looked for new Distro's that are also based on Arch and got to Garuda where i also choose the GNOME version... fresh install: same problem as with Manjaro. So i did some more research and couldn't find anything that helped me longterm.
My biggest Problem is that i don't really knew what i had to google for since i don't know what is broken, after some time i found a temporary fix myself which is:
switch to TTY2; login; "systemctl restart gdm" and now i have a log in screen properly loading.
This "temporary fix" now got it's own alias so i don't have to type the whole command everytime lol.
I've also had other problems since i switched to Arch(Garuda) that kinda taint my experience but those are minor and i'd like to fix this big one first.
tl;dr
I think my GDM service is somehow broken but i am uncertain and in first place: I need help so i know where to look for problems and maybe then i can solve them myself with the help of google.
I am missing the puzzle piece to start this "investigation" with because it's a problem since fresh install and i haven't done anything that could have caused this.
If i can provide any more information that may be helpful i am happy to do so, Garuda is running on it's own M2 SSD besides Windows that i shoved onto an old 80GB SSD, so they are seperate and shouldn't interfere.
Disregaurd, tired. You said you got the top bar so it's enabled and just not fully loading/running until you restart it. might be worth it to nuke and reinstall just gdm. (not sure if that's doable or if removing gdm will try to take the whole DE with it.
good catch @anon26187667 I didn't even notice the second screen and yeah fresh boot might be scaling wrong putting the inputs off screen. Comically if he had the guest disabled he could just type his password and hit enter to see if that was the case.
worth a shot but imma try that when there is no other way, dunno what could possibly go down the drain when i do that and i just finished setting everything up as i like it >.<. but ty
Well it's all about weeding out the possibilities. Lemme know if a nuke/reinstall of gdm does it. However if you log in via one of your manual restarts go into Garuda Assistant under the Settings tab and disable Guest Support. Then reboot so you get the gibbed GDM screen. Once there just type your password and see what it does. If the login panel is there just hidden the focus should be on the password field.
You could work around the issue by writing a service to restart gdm automatically. I am rather loath to suggest that, as that would be a really ugly hack that in no way addresses the root cause.
Sure but you can't grab GDM but the scruff, punch it in the nose and say WHERE IS IT!? WHERE IS THE PROBLEM...I mean he's not Batman.
@tgb your suggestion is completely doable as a tide over while he continues to investigate.
One of my questions is how do you configure GDM anymore? Is there something perhaps in /etc/default or /etc/gdm that can be set to denote theme, screens etc?
i for sure yelled at it, stabbing will be the next approach and if nothing helps i'll write a note with "you better be working or i will 'rm -rf /' you" and stick it on the hard drive, maybe the intimidation approach is the right one.
i am going through the GDM troubleshooting rn and came to the section "use Xorg backend"... since i am using Xorg rn should i maybe try using wayland or could that majorly ■■■■ something up?
basically doing the reverse of what is stated on the wiki and comment the "WaylandEnable" line
File: /etc/gdm/custom.conf
# GDM configuration storage
[daemon]
AutomaticLoginEnable=False
# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false
DefaultSession=gnome-xorg.desktop
If this is the case then either editing the GDM service to add a delay or enabling early loading will be worth trying (but also watch out for the requirement to regenerate the initramfs on driver updates): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA#Early_loading .
I think adding a delay is the easiest and least invasive option to try first.