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[SOLVED] Blinking cursor after today's update

I currently have a major problem with my systems no longer starting.
I started an update today and since then I only see a flashing cursor after starting. I also have no chance to open a console with Ctrl+Alt+F1.

Does anyone have any idea how I can start a new update to save the system?

Many thanks in advance.

Greets
Roberto

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #1 –
Your description doesn't make it clear how far the boot process is getting ?
If the bootloader is loading the kernel and you have a display manager which is failing to start you could interrupt the bootloader and edit the kernel command line to include
Code: [Select]
init=/usr/bin/bash
at the end (one line). Which may allow you to investigate further.
Or you could use a live usb to mount your system as a choot and make changes there.

If the bootloader is not even running check the UEFI is still set to boot the correct EFI program?

Could be lots of things ?

You said 'systems'. Has this happened on multiple installs ?

Edit:May well be this https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,6296.0

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #2 –
Sorry for the incomplete information.

The systems, (yes there are different ones on different hardware) all boot the kernel and it is the display manager that won't boot.
Since it won't start on a notebook, on an installed USB stick or virtually (qemu) after yesterday's updates, I've come to the conclusion that the update has something to do with it.

It may also have something to do with the problem with the mesa update.

https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,6296.0.html

Before I installed the updates, all systems worked perfectly.

I will try your tip and report if it is successful.

In any case, thank you very much for your support.

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #3 –
The solution was to downgrade mesa.
After that, my systems booted completely again.
It was also not necessary to exclude mesa in pacman.conf, as a corrected version is now available.

I love Artix Linux, but unfortunately such dropouts "happen" again and again and the system no longer boots or works properly.
This is quite problematic for a production system.

Nevertheless, many thanks for your help.

Greets
Roberto
 

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #4 –
Glad you got it working again.

Personally I wouldn't use Artix or any Arch based distro on a 'production' system unless there was a real need.

But if I did my workflow before any system updates would be like this

  • Have a spare partition which can hold the rootfs
  • rsync a copy of the current rootfs to the spare partition (changing fstab entries on the spare)
  • Make sure both (almost) identical partitions boot
  • Do the update on one of the partitions
  • If the update causes issues reboot into pre-update partition and attempt to investigate from there.

Otherwise you are operating on a wing and a prayer

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #5 –
Please give me a link to mesa-1\:23.3.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst to try downgrading... my pacman cache is empty...

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #7 –
Quote from: gripped – on
Personally I wouldn't use Artix or any Arch based distro on a 'production' system unless there was a real need.
Interesting statement  :D
Which rolling, no-systemd distribution would you use for a production system?

The operating system from Redmond has long been out of the question for me.  8)

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Roberto – on
Interesting statement  :D
Which rolling, no-systemd distribution would you use for a production system?

The operating system from Redmond has long been out of the question for me.  8)
I don't use rolling distro's on any (and wouldn't) and personally I don't care about systemd enough on a server to bother using anything other than Debian. Though if someone I was setting up a vps for expressed a preference for no systemd then I'd probably use Devuan.

I'm not that ideological about it all. I don't like systemd on my personal computers as years ago I found it both got in the way and broke random things at random times. On the servers (vps's) I maintain both for myself and a couple of small businesses of friends systemd has never given me much grief (I disable a lot of it) and all I'm interested is stability. Plus I'm to lazy to switch.

A lot depends on how you define 'production' ?

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #9 –
Quote from: gripped – on
A lot depends on how you define 'production' ?
For me, productive doesn't mean that I want to do professional or business things with it.
But it does mean that the notebook should work reliably with the distro when I need it.
For example, for private correspondence or e-mails and everything else for which you need a notebook in the private sphere.

Above all, when my wife needs the device, it has to work and not have to be repaired or even reinstalled.  ;D

So it's not a test system for trying out new distributions.

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #10 –
We are talking at slight cross purposes then.
I tend to think of 'production' in the terms of a computer as a server that must be as close to 100% uptime as possible.

While I'm here another way to quickly deal with broken systems after an update is cron based incremental backups of the entire rootfs using rsnapshot or similar (which is what I do) or the more modern btrfs snapshots (which I know of but have never used).

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #11 –
Production servers only boot into console and don't get affected by mesa or framebuffer hiccups. Also, production servers don't reboot unless a critical remote vulnerability is discovered and the kernel itself needs to be updated; even this can be avoided by loading a newer kernel with kexec(1).

Production workstations don't need to update every day, it's a bad habit. The only real reason to update should be a show-stopping bug getting fixed or a new nice-to-have feature implemented, and these rarely apply below the application level, with the possible exception of very new hardware and its supporting drivers stack.

As for the purported unsuitability of rolling-release Artix for production, I'll let the neofetches from 2 of our servers do the talking; we had one even older by several months which got cut short by a power outage of our hosting provider.

1051 days is almost 3 years, in case anyone wonders.

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #12 –
I'll stick to not using rolling distro's for servers. Artix or otherwise.
Just because something can be done doesn't make it the best solution. imho
Horses for courses.

I get why you'd choose Artix for the Artix servers though. But would think no less of the project if you used something else.

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #13 –
Regarding Roberto's usage case, for general reliability, I have more than one laptop which is obviously a help, and for any hardware issues too. But I also have more than one partition on the drive, and have a Devuan installation on there too. I occasionally need a Debian based OS and that's a good non-systemd choice, but there would be many possibilities (including another Artix install) if you just wanted an OS to boot for a quick alternative and a working platform to fix the other OS from. So a dual (or more if you want) boot setup that can be selected from the GRUB menu is a very good plan B, at least if you can boot as far as the GRUB menu!
 If I update whatever I'm currently using frequently, then there aren't many packages upgraded every time, so it's easy to find out what needs downgrading if a problem occurs, although that does make it more likely to hit a short term bug that is quickly fixed. Then the other machines get upgraded less often, after the currently used one has shown there are no issues. There might still be hardware specific problems but it minimises the risk, especially if you are using a similar set of software packages on the others.
 Debian based systems have their own problems too - a common example, try getting a bug fixed in a 2 year old version of an app when it's been fixed in the current version, the dev's never want to do this, after this time the code has usually been totally revised and requires newer dependencies, so the fix can't be backported and you can't install or build the newer version!  ;D

Re: Blinking cursor after today's update

Reply #14 –
Thank you all for your tips and suggestions. I still have an old Thinkpad T450 in the closet and I want to install Devuan as a security device.

Apart from that, Artix is and remains my favorite distribution, even if there are "surprises" every now and then.
So far I have been able to solve all problems thanks to the very helpful users in this forum.

So you will still have to deal with my questions ;)