Graphical login broke

[jr-de (J R)]

After I installed some updates today on my Fedora41 system the system is booting but at the end there is no graphical login, only a black screen. With STRG+ALT+F2 I can open a terminal and login with my username and password. But I need Gnome :-(.
After I read this discussion:

Graphical login broke

Hi, I’m trying to solve a puzzling problem. Last night my son did an offline-upgrade on his laptop (Fedora 39 KDE Spin, Dell XPS) and it broke graphical login. It boots up and gets to SDDM (so I guess it isn’t the graphics card?) , but if you login it goes to a black screen or back to SDDM (this behavior has varied a bit). Things we’ve tried: Login to an X11 session. No change. Boot with older kernels (so probably not the kernel). dnf history rollback (fails because it can’t find some of the …

I decided to format the hole hard disc and to install Fedora41 again. Everything went well. After the installation the system was booting and I could login in gnome. I opened the software center, downloaded all updates and restarted the computer. And then I ended where I started, a black screen. Any idea?

[theprogram (MatH)]

Could be a kernel problem.

If you can get to your Grub menu at startup you can start the originally installed kernel.

Or if you can get to a console you can run

sudo dnf downgrade kernel

[david-guillot]

Hi there,

I just experienced the same issue this morning after system update. I was successfully running F41 with GNOME for months, keeping it up-to-date every weekday.

What could be useful for troubleshooting is that after deciding a full reinstall, I chose F41 Xfce (that I wanted to try because my hardware is “old”) instead of GNOME, which is running on X instead of Wayland. And after the first post-install system upgrade, boom, same problem.

Here is the inxi -Fzxx output for my F41 Xfce:

System:
  Kernel: 6.11.4-301.fc41.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 14.2.1
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.18.1 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.43 wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM
    Distro: Fedora Linux 41 (Xfce)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Precision 7510 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 9 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0W4F4V v: A00 serial: <superuser required> part-nu: 06D9
    UEFI-[Legacy]: Dell v: 1.9.5 date: 12/22/2016
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 68.4 Wh (100.0%) condition: 68.4/91.0 Wh (75.2%)
    volts: 12.8 min: 11.4 model: LGC-LGC3.975 DELL RDYCT19 serial: <filter>
    status: full
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i5-6300HQ bits: 64 type: MCP
    arch: Skylake-S rev: 3 cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 6 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 800/3200 cores: 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800
    bogomips: 18399
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Venus XTX [Radeon HD 8890M / R9
    M275X/M375X] vendor: Dell driver: radeon v: kernel arch: GCN-1 pcie:
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: DP-1,eDP-1 empty: DP-2,DP-3,VGA-1
    bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:6820 temp: 55.0 C
  Device-2: Sunplus Innovation Dell E5570 integrated webcam driver: uvcvideo
    type: USB rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-11:5
    chip-ID: 1bcf:2b91
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.13 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.3
    compositor: xfwm4 v: 4.18.0 driver: X: loaded: radeon unloaded: modesetting
    alternate: fbdev,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: radeon display-ID: :0.0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 3840x1080 s-dpi: 96
  Monitor-1: DP-1 mapped: DisplayPort-0 pos: primary,right
    model: Dell P2317H res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 96 diag: 584mm (23")
  Monitor-2: eDP-1 mapped: eDP pos: left model: AU Optronics 0x11ed
    res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 142 diag: 394mm (15.5")
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa v: 24.2.4 glx-v: 1.4 es-v: 3.2
    direct-render: yes renderer: VERDE (radeonsi LLVM 19.1.0 DRM 2.50
    6.11.4-301.fc41.x86_64) device-ID: 1002:6820
  API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
  Info: Tools: api: glxinfo de: xfce4-display-settings x11: xdriinfo,
    xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 100 Series/C230 Series Family HD Audio vendor: Dell
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:a170
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Oland/Hainan/Cape
    Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7000 Series] vendor: Dell
    driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16
    bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:aab0
  API: ALSA v: k6.11.4-301.fc41.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.2.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
    4: pw-jack type: plugin
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-LM vendor: Dell driver: e1000e v: kernel
    port: N/A bus-ID: 00:1f.6 chip-ID: 8086:15b7
  IF: enp0s31f6 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie:
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24f3
  IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 119.24 GiB used: 5.55 GiB (4.7%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: A-Data model: SSD DP900 128GB-DL3 size: 119.24 GiB
    speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter>
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 118.22 GiB used: 5.26 GiB (4.5%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/dm-0
    mapped: luks-53c37cf0-cda4-4350-ad3c-719cee6a7452
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 296.3 MiB (30.4%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-3: /home size: 118.22 GiB used: 5.26 GiB (4.5%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/dm-0 mapped: luks-53c37cf0-cda4-4350-ad3c-719cee6a7452
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 100
    dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 47.0 C pch: 47.0 C mobo: 47.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C
    gpu: radeon temp: 55.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): cpu: 1996
Info:
  Memory: total: 16 GiB note: est. available: 15.44 GiB used: 4.11 GiB (26.6%)
  Processes: 279 Power: uptime: 2h 18m wakeups: 0 Init: systemd v: 256
    target: graphical (5) default: graphical
  Packages: pm: rpm pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm Compilers: N/A Shell: Bash
    v: 5.2.32 running-in: xfce4-terminal inxi: 3.3.37

Hope this helps, and hope that a solution will be found soon, because right now I have no other solution that a full reinstall a never apply updates again.

[gnwiii (George N. White III)]

@david-guillot

hope that a solution will be found soon, because right now I have no other solution that a full reinstall a never apply updates again.

Many issues get fixed quickly once they are understood. With old graphics cards you may want to replace it with a newer low-end card that offer better performance along with drivers that have active vendor support.

You will need to collect some data that will help us understand the problem. I have often seen issues with new kernels on older systems where graphics failed due to a change in the kernel that requires changes to a graphic driver that were missed a) because kernel devs don’t use old hardware and b) the people who wrote the old driver and would understand the problem have moved on.

Troubleshooting usually requires console/terminal tools. The first step is to enable console output when booting. Press Esc when booting or remove the rhgb quiet from the kernel command line. This may get you an error message that leads to a solution.

journalctl collects massive amounts of detail, so can take some effort to zero in on you problem. You run it in a terminal. If you can boot to a text console, you can start with journalctl --no-hostame -b -1 -p 3. Read 'man journalctlto see explanations of these options. You can try replace-p 3with-g radeon`.

[jr-de (J R)]

@MatH: Thank you for this hint. Among the updates I received on Sunday was actually a new kernel. I also suspected that this could be the cause. So I tried all the old kernel entries in the Grub-Menu. None of the older kernels solved the problem.

[gnwiii (George N. White III)]

@jr-de

None of the older kernels solved the problem.

That could be due to a firmware update or a hardware failure. You can use journalctl to look for messages related to firmware. Firmware problems will affect users of other distros with the same hardware, so should appear in web searches. Some graphics vendors have bootable diagnostics.

[skcher (sam kcher)]

I am also facing this issue after updating my system on Monday (3 March). I am not able to login into the gnome session. It’s just blank screen but I was able to access the tty.
I thought it must be because of the latest kernel so I switched to the previous version via grub and tried again, but the result was the same.

Then I ran journalctl on gdm and it showed an error
'gdmdisplay session never registered failing'

So i installed SDDM via tty and disabled gdm and tried again.
so this time it showed the login screen and was able to enter my password but after pressing enter it just redirected me back to the login screen. I tried this with all the sessions unsuccessfully.
Then I installed LightDM I got the login screen and was able to login successfully into ‘Gnome Classic’ session ( was not successful with the wayland sessions).

Since, I had urgent tasks to be completed I took backup, did a fresh install and switched to Swaywm spin (since I had some understanding of i3wm before) and it is working fine even after the latest update to kernel 6.13.5

I have been using fedora gnome for the last 4 years and this is the first time I have had any issues with an fedora update.
I use AMD GPU and Intel processor, if that is of any help.

[domcox (Dominique Corbex)]

Same issue here, on Silverblue with an AMD GPU.
Eventually, I found this is related to the recently upgraded Mesa packages to 25.0.0.

A quick fix is to download the previous mesa packages:

• mesa-filesystem-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-libGL-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-libgbm-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-va-drivers-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-vulkan-drivers-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-dri-drivers-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-libEGL-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm
• mesa-libglapi-24.3.4-3.fc41.x86_64.rpm

Then to override the existing packages (25.0.0-2.fc41)

sudo rpm-ostree override replace ./mesa*rpm

See comments on Bohdi about the latest mesa packages.

[gadget (CYL)]

I ran into the same problem a couple days ago…

From earlier posts over the past couple months, some users back in early January reported the same symptoms with Fedora 41 running in virtual machines.

But this time around its seems to affect those with an AMD GPU. One of my laptops with an Intel GPU runs fine after a full upgrade, but my other laptop with an AMD Radeon GPU got as far as GDM (login screen manager) then any attempt to log on would kick me back out to the login screen. And even more interesting, a reinstall of Fedora 41 followed by an upgrade resulted in only a blank black display instead of GDM.

Looking over the kernel messages, GDM hands over the display to GNOME Shell which then immediately segfaults:

[Mon Mar  3 10:07:09 2025] gnome-shell[1371]: segfault at 8 ip 00007fcd0d228f2f sp 00007ffe950a19a0 error 4 in libgallium-25.0.0.so[28f2f,7fcd0d201000+1ab8000] likely on CPU 0 (core 0, socket 0)

A dnf provides libgallium* returned the following packages:

$ dnf provides libgallium*
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.0-2.fc41.x86_64 : Mesa-based DRI drivers
Repo         : @System
Matched From : 
Provide      : mesa-dri-drivers = 25.0.0-2.fc41

mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.0-2.fc41.i686 : Mesa-based DRI drivers
Repo         : updates
Matched From : 
Provide      : mesa-dri-drivers = 25.0.0-2.fc41

mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.0-2.fc41.x86_64 : Mesa-based DRI drivers
Repo         : updates
Matched From : 
Provide      : mesa-dri-drivers = 25.0.0-2.fc41

mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.0-2.fc41.i686 : Mesa-based DRI drivers
Repo         : fedora
Matched From : 
Provide      : mesa-dri-drivers = 25.0.0-2.fc41

mesa-dri-drivers-25.0.0-2.fc41.x86_64 : Mesa-based DRI drivers
Repo         : fedora
Matched From : 
Provide      : mesa-dri-drivers = 25.0.0-2.fc41

I’m running the regular workstation edition, so first I downgraded to the previous version that was working fine…

dnf downgrade --allow-downgrade mesa-dri-drivers

Then after a quick reboot to confirm that I could log back onto my desktop, so that I could still easily upgrade all other packages without breaking my system, I locked the version of mesa-dri-drivers…

dnf versionlock add mesa-dri-drivers

A followup dnf upgrade then includes the following notice:

Package                                                                           Arch              Version                                                                           Repository                                         Size
Skipping packages with conflicts:
 mesa-filesystem                                                                  x86_64            25.0.0-2.fc41                                                                     updates                                         3.6 KiB
Skipping packages with broken dependencies:
 mesa-dri-drivers                                                                 i686              24.2.4-1.fc41                                                                     fedora                                        149.9 MiB
 mesa-dri-drivers                                                                 x86_64            24.2.4-1.fc41                                                                     fedora                                        142.2 MiB
 mesa-libEGL                                                                      x86_64            25.0.0-2.fc41                                                                     updates                                       336.0 KiB
 mesa-libGL                                                                       x86_64            25.0.0-2.fc41                                                                     updates                                       424.9 KiB
 mesa-libgbm                                                                      x86_64            25.0.0-2.fc41                                                                     updates                                        24.0 KiB
 mesa-va-drivers                                                                  x86_64            25.0.0-2.fc41                                                                     updates                                        92.0   B
 mesa-vulkan-drivers    

[skcher (sam kcher)]

That means these driver issues are affecting the Gnome Wayland sessions. I am running the same updated driver version in Sway and its working fine so far.
Anyway I have switched to Sway and I am enjoying using it. Thanks to this bug
It’s so ‘light weight’ compared to gnome. Though it took me few days to configure it.
Maybe will switch back to Gnome later. Thanks for the update.