GDM Freezes to Underscore "_" After Upgrade to 44

[zborgerd (Zach Borgerding)]

Hello,

After upgrading to Fedora 44, my system no longer can start GDM without freezing to an underscore “_” in the upper-left of my displays (dual monitor setup). I cannot switch to another virtual TTY in this frozen state, but CTL+ALT+DEL can reboot.

I am aware that GNOME 50 is no longer using X11/X.org, but I can get GNOME to start using the following…

I was able to work around this by booting into recovery mode and setting:

sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target

I temporarily installed “slick-greeter” and enabled it:

sudo systemctl disable gdm
sudo systemctl enable lightdm

I was able to launch into GNOME with lightdm:

sudo systemctl start lightdm

The system is otherwise working correctly other than the issue with GDM.

I have attempted to force Wayland in /etc/gdm/custom.conf with no success.

[daemon]
WaylandEnable=true

I’ve cleared the custom.conf and reinstalled the gdm packages so that it automatically replaces the custom.conf with a default. This was also unsuccessful.

Has anyone else encountered this issue and / or has an idea of how to go about troubleshooting this issue? I see a lot of information online about the proprietary nVidia drivers, which I am not using, as this is strictly an AMD system.

Thank you.

[zborgerd (Zach Borgerding)]

It ended up being the problem described here, due to my upgrade from FC42 to 44:

No login screen after upgrade to f43 (Solved: authselect was never set up on a system upgraded through many versions)

I solved this myself but wanted to document the solution in case other users might have the same issues. All hints and feedback on how to best achieve this goal are appreciated. Issue The upgrade itself ran smooth but after boot there is just a blinking cursor, no login screen. Debugging steps (feel free to skip) Switch to a text console (Ctrl+Alt+F3), login as prompted. Check for failed services systemctl --failed Some user@[somenumber].service entries were listed systemctl status user@[s…

I had no configuration from:

authselect current

I asked a buddy on FC44 to provide his output on a more recent install, and he had:

Profile ID: local
Enabled features:
- with-silent-lastlog
- with-fingerprint
- with-mdns4

I was able to resolve the issue with the following command from the thread above:

sudo authselect select local with-silent-lastlog with-mdns4 --force

I omitted fingerprint even though it seems to be there by default in fresh installs.

[vezza (Andrea Vezzali)]

Hi, it seems that I am facing to the same problem but I’m not able to get rid of it… (Fedora 44 x86_64 workstation - nvidia Geforce 1050Ti dkms proprietary driver), what about this message in the log (why Xwayland)?:
Xwayland[25346]: Can't send to audit system: USER_SELINUX_ERR avc: op=load_policy lsm=selinux seqno=43 res=1 exe="/usr/bin/Xwayland" sauid=0 hostname=? addr=? terminal=tty3

[gnwiii (George N. White III)]

If the solution that worked for Zach didn’t solve the problem for you, it is likely that the same symptom has a different cause and solution. To maximize chances of finding a solution please start a new topic. When reporting an issue you should provide enough detail to allow others with similar hardware to reproduce the issue:

1. basic data describing your system from running inxi -Fzxx in a terminal (you may need to install inxi), posted as web-discoverable text using the </> button.
2. applying all Fedora and vendor firmware updates avoids lengthy exchanges comparing configurations and avoids wasting time on a solved problem.