GUI not starting after upgrade to 22.05

Help
1

I only get a console prompt after upgrading. I ran

nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade

once more but it didn’t help. I did

journalctl -xeu display-manager.service

and it produces:

Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) modeset(0): [DRI2] Setup complete
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) modeset(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: crocus
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) modeset(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: va_gl
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): Channel setup complete.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): [COPY] async initialised.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): Hardware support for Present enabled
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): [DRI2] Setup complete
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: nouveau
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: nouveau
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) Loading sub module "exa"
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) LoadModule: "exa"
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) Loading /nix/store/9l4w5ahmyb8qlj7qdsrvggxd26cgiq17-xorg-server-21.1.3/lib/xorg/modules/libexa.so
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) Module exa: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]:         compiled for 1.21.1.3, module version = 2.6.0
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]:         ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 25.2
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) EXA(256): Driver allocated offscreen pixmaps
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) EXA(256): Driver registered support for the following operations:
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II)         Solid
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II)         Copy
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II)         Composite (RENDER acceleration)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II)         UploadToScreen
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II)         DownloadFromScreen
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (==) NOUVEAU(G0): Backing store enabled
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (==) NOUVEAU(G0): Silken mouse enabled
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): [XvMC] Associated with Nouveau GeForce 8/9 Textured Video.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (II) NOUVEAU(G0): [XvMC] Extension initialized.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (==) NOUVEAU(G0): DPMS enabled
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) Backtrace:
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 0: /nix/store/9l4w5ahmyb8qlj7qdsrvggxd26cgiq17-xorg-server-21.1.3/bin/X (OsSigHandler+0x25) [0x5b4015]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 1: /nix/store/lyl6nysc3i3aqhj6shizjgj0ibnf1pvg-glibc-2.34-210/lib/libc.so.6 (__sigaction+0x40) [0x7f38f15cc0e0]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 2: /nix/store/9l4w5ahmyb8qlj7qdsrvggxd26cgiq17-xorg-server-21.1.3/bin/X (InitOutput+0x4e4) [0x4876e4]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 3: /nix/store/9l4w5ahmyb8qlj7qdsrvggxd26cgiq17-xorg-server-21.1.3/bin/X (dix_main+0x194) [0x448664]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 4: /nix/store/lyl6nysc3i3aqhj6shizjgj0ibnf1pvg-glibc-2.34-210/lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_call_main+0x67) [0x7f38f15b8237]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 5: /nix/store/lyl6nysc3i3aqhj6shizjgj0ibnf1pvg-glibc-2.34-210/lib/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0x85) [0x7f38f15b82f5]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) 6: /nix/store/9l4w5ahmyb8qlj7qdsrvggxd26cgiq17-xorg-server-21.1.3/bin/X (_start+0x21) [0x431ca1]
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x4b1
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: Fatal server error:
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]:          at http://wiki.x.org
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]:  for help.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) Please also check the log file at "/dev/null" for additional information.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE)
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 xserver-wrapper[1183]: (EE) Server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 sddm[1149]: Failed to read display number from pipe
Jun 04 22:50:20 nixosl1 sddm[1149]: Could not start Display server on vt 7

I’m happy that the 21.11 installation is still working and I hope that someone can assist me on this. I hope I haven’t missed something concerning X11, SDDM or KDE on the upgrade guide.

thx

2

There are other ways but the simplest one is to just reboot.

It’s generally a good idea to nixos-rebuild boot and then reboot when upgrading, especially between major versions.

3

thx - but that didn’t help - The laptop is booting from the new 5.15 kernel. X isn’t starting.

4

Huh. What’s the HW and does the exact same config work on 21.11 (build and boot a generation on 21.11 with the same config to be sure).

Could you also post the config?

5

These postings come from the 21.11 config. That’s still working.

The hardware is dated:

[guido@nixosl1:~]$ lscpu
Architektur:                       x86_64
  CPU Operationsmodus:             32-bit, 64-bit
  Adressgrößen:                    36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
  Byte-Reihenfolge:                Little Endian
CPU(s):                            4
  Liste der Online-CPU(s):         0-3
Anbieterkennung:                   GenuineIntel
  Modellname:                      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz
#
[guido@nixosl1:~]$ free -m
              gesamt       benutzt     frei      gemns.  Puffer/Cache verfügbar
Speicher:        5853        1062         908         434        3883        4104
Swap:             0           0           0

There are 2 GPUs: An Intel onboard and a Nivdia Geforce GT 540M (according to KDE info panel).

Below is the part for X from configuration.nix

  # Enable the X11 windowing system.
  # services.xserver.enable = true;
  # services.xserver.layout = "us";
  # services.xserver.xkbOptions = "eurosign:e";
  services.xserver.enable = true;
  services.xserver.layout = "de";
  services.xserver.xkbOptions = "eurosign:e";

  # Enable touchpad support.
  # services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;
  services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;

  # Enable the KDE Desktop Environment.
  # services.xserver.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
  # services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
  services.xserver.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
6

Xorg server 21.1.3 is known to have this type of crash with certain graphics cards. It’s unfortunately hitting a lot of people when upgrading to Quokka.

There’s a workaround on the way for stable, but it’s going through staging. You can either wait a couple days to upgrade or backport the fix.

7

@xgusch If you need some way to get it to work for now while waiting on the patch, and don’t want to rebuild yourself, adding boot.kernelParams = [ "nouveau.modeset=0" ] to your config is a temporary solution

2 Likes
8

Many thanks for all the hints! I’m going to wait.

9

I have a similar issue but with the nvidia driver. Blank screen and no errors in the display-manager log.

1 Like
10

Facing the same issue with an AMD card. Adding boot.kernelParams = [ "amdgpu.modeset=0" ]; didn’t get it to work for me, unfortunately.
I am able to start the display manager after disabling the driver with modprobe -r amdgpu though.

11

I haven’t heard of the same issue with AMD so far.

Note that now all channels already have downgraded xorg-server, so it should be resolved, too.

2 Likes
12

I just updated, and am still on xorg-server 1.21.1.3.
People in the GitHub issue are mentioning it happening with AMD, too. It appears to be an issue with the modesetting driver.

13

I can confirm that the issue persists after the latest update, unfortunately.

14

solved for me with the latest update

3 Likes
15

Hey, nixOS newcomer here. Adding my experience and solution to this issue

Was having the same problem with my LENOVO PC with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Graphics card and the latest updates weren’t fixing it for me, not even in nixos-unstable and trying to upgrade to kernel 5.19 was hanging my system on boot on a firewall job that went on indefinitely.

The way I circumvented this was by reinstalling the system with the gnome desktop instead and changing the /etc/nixos/configuration.nix to have the kde desktop instead:
changing
services.xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
to
services.xserver.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
and run sudo nixos-rebuild boot && reboot

note that I had added some more configurations to my configuration.nix file, like making my graphics card work, that might have triggered it to start working, here’s my configuration.nix:

# Edit this configuration file to define what should be installed on
# your system.  Help is available in the configuration.nix(5) man page
# and in the NixOS manual (accessible by running ‘nixos-help’).

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports =
    [ # Include the results of the hardware scan.
      ./hardware-configuration.nix
    ];

  # Bootloader.
  #    -- systemd-boot --
  # boot.loader.systemd-boot.enable = true;
  # boot.loader.efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;
  # boot.loader.efi.efiSysMountPoint = "/boot/efi";
  #    -- grub --
  boot.loader = {
   efi = {
    canTouchEfiVariables = true;
    efiSysMountPoint = "/boot/efi";
   };
   grub = {
    enable = true;
    version = 2;
    efiSupport = true;
    devices = [ "nodev" ];
    useOSProber = true;
   };
  };
  boot.cleanTmpDir = true;
  boot.supportedFilesystems = [ "ntfs" ];

  swapDevices = [ {
    device = "/var/lib/swapfile";
    size = 20*1024;
  } ];

  networking.hostName = "nixos"; # Define your hostname.
  # networking.wireless.enable = true;  # Enables wireless support via wpa_supplicant.

  # Configure network proxy if necessary
  # networking.proxy.default = "http://user:password@proxy:port/";
  # networking.proxy.noProxy = "127.0.0.1,localhost,internal.domain";

  # Enable networking
  networking.networkmanager.enable = true;

  # Set your time zone.
  time.timeZone = "Europe/Lisbon";

  # Select internationalisation properties.
  i18n.defaultLocale = "en_GB.utf8";

  i18n.extraLocaleSettings = {
    LC_ADDRESS = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_IDENTIFICATION = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_MEASUREMENT = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_MONETARY = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_NAME = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_NUMERIC = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_PAPER = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_TELEPHONE = "pt_PT.utf8";
    LC_TIME = "pt_PT.utf8";
  };

  # Enable the X11 windowing system.
  services.xserver.enable = true;

  # Enable the GNOME Desktop Environment.
 # services.xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
 # services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
  services.xserver.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
  services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;

  # Configure keymap in X11
  services.xserver = {
    layout = "pt";
    xkbVariant = "";
  };

  # Configure console keymap
  console.keyMap = "pt-latin1";

  # Enable CUPS to print documents.
  services.printing.enable = true;

  # Enable sound with pipewire.
  sound.enable = true;
  hardware.pulseaudio.enable = false;
  security.rtkit.enable = true;
  services.pipewire = {
    enable = true;
    alsa.enable = true;
    alsa.support32Bit = true;
    pulse.enable = true;
    # If you want to use JACK applications, uncomment this
    #jack.enable = true;

    # use the example session manager (no others are packaged yet so this is enabled by default,
    # no need to redefine it in your config for now)
    #media-session.enable = true;
  };

  # Enable touchpad support (enabled default in most desktopManager).
  # services.xserver.libinput.enable = true;

  # Define a user account. Don't forget to set a password with ‘passwd’.
  users.users.yeshey = {
    isNormalUser = true;
    description = "Yeshey";
    extraGroups = [ "networkmanager" "wheel" ];
    packages = with pkgs; [
    #  firefox
    #  thunderbird
    ];
  };

  # Allow unfree packages
  nixpkgs.config = {
    allowUnfree = true;
    vivaldi = {
      proprietaryCodecs = true;
      enableWideVine = true;
    };
    cudaSupport = true; # for blender
  };

  # List packages installed in system profile. To search, run:
  # $ nix search wget
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    vim # Do not forget to add an editor to edit configuration.nix! The Nano editor is also installed by default.
    wget
    htop
    cudaPackages.cudatoolkit # for blender
    blender # for blender
    vscode
    vivaldi
    # for plsma config saver
    scrot
    kdialog
  ];

  # Auto Upgrade
  system.autoUpgrade.enable = true;
  system.autoUpgrade.allowReboot = true;

  # NVIDIA drivers 
  services.xserver.videoDrivers = [ "nvidia" ];
  hardware.opengl.enable = true;

  # Some programs need SUID wrappers, can be configured further or are
  # started in user sessions.
  # programs.mtr.enable = true;
  # programs.gnupg.agent = {
  #   enable = true;
  #   enableSSHSupport = true;
  # };

  # List services that you want to enable:

  # Enable the OpenSSH daemon.
  # services.openssh.enable = true;

  # Open ports in the firewall.
  # networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ ... ];
  # networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts = [ ... ];
  # Or disable the firewall altogether.
  # networking.firewall.enable = false;

  # This value determines the NixOS release from which the default
  # settings for stateful data, like file locations and database versions
  # on your system were taken. It‘s perfectly fine and recommended to leave
  # this value at the release version of the first install of this system.
  # Before changing this value read the documentation for this option
  # (e.g. man configuration.nix or on https://nixos.org/nixos/options.html).
  system.stateVersion = "22.05"; # Did you read the comment?

}
16

Hi, could anyone that previously had issues try the new xorgserver 21.1.5 version?