[solved] F43 Cinnamon black screen after login

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Hi everyone,

I want to share some experience with you about F43 Cinnamon spin. The conditions are:

Host: ThinkPadX1CarbonGen10 Kernel: 6.17.7-300.fc43.x86_64 arch: x86_64
bits: 64
Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.12 Distro: Fedora Linux 43 (Cinnamon)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 21CBCTO1WW v: ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Luxvisions Innotech Integrated RGB Camera driver: uvcvideo
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.20 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.9 driver: X:
loaded: modesetting dri: iris gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: intel mesa v: 25.2.6 renderer: Mesa Intel Iris
Xe Graphics (ADL GT2)
Info: Tools: api: glxinfo x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

The issue was: When I entered my password at the login screen and hit enter I got a black screen with the mouse pointer only. I could change to a TTY and login in and work that way to reboot for example. This phenomenon vanished after I picked the Wayland entry from the login screens menu which has three entries: X11, Wayland and a third with “experimental” I think. So I switched from X11 classic to Wayland and logged in successfully with a full cinnamon desktop working. Then I realized I had the US keyboard layout which is not my default and whatever I tried I could not change this and all setting where set to my preferred language and keyboard layout which is German (QWERTZ). Nevertheless I could not get rid of the US-kb-layout. Then I logged off, changed the Cinnamon-setting back to X11 and everything was working as expected.

It’s strange behaviour, but I thought if anyone else has issues of that kind, it might be helpful to know.

Have a nice time

stippi

Edit: It was a fresh installation on a clean, brand new NVMe, by the way.

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This phenomenon occurs after installation and first boot right after.

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Hi, did you actually find a solution to this problem? I have the same issue, with precisely the details you describe, on a new Lenovo X1 Gen 13, also with a fresh installation of F43 Cinnamon Spin. So far, the only “solution” I have is the one you describe: First time after reboot log in via Cinnamon Wayland (experimental), log out immediately and then log in via Cinnamon (X11). (Cinnamon Wayland has too many visual glitches to be an option for regular use). Not very elegant…

Best,
Marcel

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Hi Marcel,

No, sorry. As this one-time switch from X11 to Wayland and back worked, I didn’t see any need to look deeper into this issue.

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I found the reason and a solution: As it turns out, the Fedora installer autoconfigured the hostname to something like xxx.fritz.box, where fritz.box is a fake domain that is only valid on the local network and apparently provided by the DSL router (Fritz is a popular brand of routers in Germany…).

It appears that this made either lightdm or cinnamon try access the network and hang. The likely culprit is the Fedora default greeter (slick-greeter), the lightdm-gtk-greeter also fails on first login, but immediately times out and returns to the login screen; it will always succeed on second attempt.

Setting the hostname (hostnamectl …) to something else fixes the issue.

Hope this helps,
Marcel

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