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Topic: Borked graphical Plasma ISO? (Read 650 times) previous topic - next topic
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Borked graphical Plasma ISO?

Hello there.

I wanted to install Artix on my laptop, and went with the graphical OpenRC installer ISO with Plasma's desktop environment. The installation process, however, was mired with issues, and the installed system was hardly functional. Trying to install Artix with XFCE (also OpenRC) on the exact same laptop in the exact same way resulted in no issues at all, everything worked smooth even after uninstalling XFCE and getting KDE's Plasma onboard.

Here is a semi-detailed list of things that happened:
1. During the bootup sequence I get two warnings. 1. "WARNING: NetworkManager has started, but is inactive" and 2. "WARNING: netmount will start when Network Manager has started".
2. The system worked perfectly fine until I tried connecting to a network through Wi-Fi. From that point onward, nothing could ever launch, not even shutdown and logout buttons would react.
3. Opening Konsole beforehand, then connecting to the network and trying to open programs through the terminal, the error that popped out for all programs was that they could not connect to the :0 display, even though it was found.
4. The first time I didn't know what was going on, and just force-shutdown the system by holding the power button. When I booted it back up into the USB stick, the screen was filled with grey-ish flickering squares, as if I just punched my screen so hard it broke.
5. Eventually I resolved to just installing the system without an internet connection. The calamaries installer worked just fine, it seems. But when I booted the system and was asked for the drive encryption key, the keyboard layout was set to US, even though all throughout the install process I used the Swedish layout. Thankfully I didn't have any characters in the password like ö and ä, but still, pretty annoying. Also it took a helluva long time after inputting the password and it booting further, it was like a 5-10 second wait whereas with other systems (QubesOS, for example) a disk encryption password would get processed in a second or two.
6. After finally booting up, I was unable to log in. I made 100% sure I was typing in the password correctly, but pressing Enter or clicking Login just did nothing. Neither did hitting Shutdown or Reboot, in fact. Somehow, I was able to log into the root account, but I never had any such luck with the actual user account. Once I logged in as root, things seemed to work alright, though I haven't tested it too much.

I can provide pictures/videos of the issues as proof. I verified the signature and the Sha256Sum, the ISO I used is legit. Since the same laptop had no problems whatsoever with the XFCE-based ISO, I suspect Plasma is doing something weird.

EDIT: I tested the same ISO on the same USB stick on my stationary PC, which uses Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi. Issue 1 did appear, but 2 and 3 were not present. I tested it on another laptop, which also uses Wi-Fi, and issues 1-3 were present. I went back to the original laptop and, instead of Wi-Fi, plugged in the Ethernet cable, and sure enough, while 1 was still present, 2 and 3 were fixed. I was never able to replicate issue 4, and testing issues 5 and 6 requires actually installing the system, which I didn't want to do on either machine. So this seems to be a problem between Plasma and Wi-Fi, though what exactly is the source of the issue or why it's even there eludes me, I'm not sure how I can check that.

Re: Borked graphical Plasma ISO?

Reply #1 –
1. This is feature of OpenRC NetworkManager script. NM is marked as inactive until the network connection is made.
2, 3. These one I believe are connected and I somehow believe the cause is that NetworkManager changes the system hostname after it connects to the network.

So I guess that hostname is not correctly set on ISO and thus it fails as described.
It might work on system with physical Ethernet connection since the hostname is received/configured the same way but much sooner (probably before X starts).

Well, those are just my thought, rather wait for someone more involved in wordly affairs to give you correct answers.

Re: Borked graphical Plasma ISO?

Reply #2 –
Quote from: チルノ – on
I wanted to install Artix on my laptop, and went with the graphical OpenRC installer ISO with Plasma's desktop environment. The installation process, however, was mired with issues, and the installed system was hardly functional. Trying to install Artix with XFCE (also OpenRC) on the exact same laptop in the exact same way resulted in no issues at all, everything worked smooth even after uninstalling XFCE and getting KDE's Plasma onboard.
Did you use the latest weekly plasma ISO? The networkmanager -openrc package underwent some changes and you may have got the broken version thereof.

Quote from: チルノ – on
Also it took a helluva long time after inputting the password and it booting further, it was like a 5-10 second wait whereas with other systems (QubesOS, for example) a disk encryption password would get processed in a second or two.
Perhaps a stronger encryption algorithm is used by calamares?

Quote from: チルノ – on
6. After finally booting up, I was unable to log in. I made 100% sure I was typing in the password correctly, but pressing Enter or clicking Login just did nothing. Neither did hitting Shutdown or Reboot, in fact. Somehow, I was able to log into the root account, but I never had any such luck with the actual user account. Once I logged in as root, things seemed to work alright, though I haven't tested it too much.
I can provide pictures/videos of the issues as proof. I verified the signature and the Sha256Sum, the ISO I used is legit. Since the same laptop had no problems whatsoever with the XFCE-based ISO, I suspect Plasma is doing something weird.
This may need further investigation, please post the /etc/os-release of your problematic installation.