sddm-greeter screen comes up white and blank

[GoinEasy9]

Hello

It started with the update on 12/30. After the update, when rebooted, the greeter screen came up white and blank. If I carefully type in the password, hit and miss, kde would come up. When it didn't I could move to another terminal, log in as user, then type startx and kde comes up. When logging out, a screen asking for password to re-login would appear normally.

The same thing is happening on my Tumbleweed install on the same computer.

I reinstalled siduction (Masters of War) on the computer, same problem.

I'm assuming that the age of the computer, and the fact that it's using the last nvidia card I own, that, and the fact I'm using nouveau may be the cause:
System:
  Host: siductionMoW Kernel: 6.1.1-5-siduction-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.26.4 Distro: siduction 22.1 Masters_of_War - kde -
    (202212291659)

Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] driver: nouveau v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.5 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: nouveau gpu: nouveau resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 3.3 Mesa 22.3.1 renderer: NV94


I've checked the Debian Bugzilla and don't seem to find anything searching under Mesa, Xorg and sddm

Does anyone have any idea why I'm getting white screen only on sddm-greeter screen, every thing else is working perfectly.

Tumbleweed inxi for comparison
System:
 Host: linux-c7e9 Kernel: 6.1.1-1-default arch: x86_64 bits: 64
   Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.26.4 Distro: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20230101
Graphics:
 Device-1: NVIDIA G94 [GeForce 9600 GT] driver: nouveau v: kernel
 Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.6 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.7 driver: X:
   loaded: nouveau unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa dri: nouveau gpu: nouveau
   resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz

Thanks in Advance
Tom

[vinzv]

I have no idea why that happens. But one thing you could try, is to switch the SDDM theme once you're logged in.

Or try looking at the various themes installed with sddm-greeter in test mode:

Code Auswählen Erweitern

sddm-greeter --test-mode --theme /usr/share/sddm/themes/<name of the theme>/

Just to rule the theme(s) out as a cause for the problem.

[hendrikL]

Maybe "journalctl | grep sddm" is showing something usefully!

[towo]

I would oracle, the problem is nouveau.

[GoinEasy9]

Thanks for all the feedback.

I'm going to have to agree with towo, at this point after all the experimenting it has to be nouveau. Both siduction and Tumbleweed have the same error while using nouveau on that same machine. The error doesn't occur on my machines that have AMD or Intel graphics.

journalctl -b | grep nouveau brought up many lines with errors like "Invalid opcode", but, it's beyond my nouveau foo to understand. (example attached)

I'd like to file a bug or find the bug report for this error. I can't be the only one with older hardware that's using nouveau and having this problem.

Thanks again
Tom

[vinzv]

Digging around here brought nothing useful, at least for me: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/nouveau/-/issues

But maybe you can find something or at least open up a bug report yourself there.

[GoinEasy9]

Thanks for the link vinzv,

Until the problem resolves itself, I'll be looking around for an answer. That's a start.

Tom