Failed to start Light Display Manager on fresh install: "Start request repeated too quickly"

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1

Ever since I completed the install, I observe the following three scenarios on bootups:

  • Scenario 1 (50% of cases): Successful bootup and automatic login into Cinnamon, everything is working as expected.
  • Scenario 2 (10% of cases): I boot into the lock screen (even though I have enabled auto-login) and have to enter my pw. After that everything works as expected.
  • Scenario 3 (40% of cases): I get a [FAILED] Failed to start Light Display Manager message. Then I have to switch to another tty, login and type startx.

In case of scenario 3, these following two follow-up scenarios happen:

  • Scenario 3a (80% of cases): Everything works as expected.
  • Scenario 3b (20% of cases): The desktop freezes 1-2 seconds after the login and I have to switch to another tty and reboot.

In scenario 2 (boot into lock screen) journalctl yields:

Jan 26 19:59:14 test-s6 audit[1]: SERVICE_START pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj==unconfined msg>
Jan 26 19:59:14 test-s6 systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 26 19:59:14 test-s6 systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 26 19:59:14 test-s6 audit[1]: SERVICE_STOP pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj==unconfined msg=>

In scenario 3 (lightdm error) journalctl yields:

Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 5.
Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 audit[1]: SERVICE_START pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj==unconfined msg='uni>
Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 audit[1]: SERVICE_STOP pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj==unconfined msg='unit>
Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 systemd[1]: Stopped Light Display Manager.
Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 systemd[1]: lightdm.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 26 07:04:20 test-s6 systemd[1]: Failed to start Light Display Manager.

System is freshly installed and fully updated. This happens with 5.15 and 5.16 Kernel. I also tried reinstalling the system two times. I’m using the newest Cinnnamon ISO.

I’ve researched this error, which is obviously quite common. However, most topics circle around Nvidia issues. I found one other thread of an iGPU user like me who obviously couldn’t have his problem solved either: Failed to start light display manager on every startup - #2 by Fabby

My inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width

[...]
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Cezanne vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel
    bus-ID: 08:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:1226 class-ID: 0300
[...]
2

I think it might have something to do with the kernel. I just switched to 5.10 LTS, rebooted a couple of times and now it seems to be working properly.

3

First thing you want to check is that the AMD module is being loaded, see solution in this thread: GDM does not start until I switch tty,

1 Like
4

Thanks a bunch, that seems to have solved it. At least I’ve rebooted a couple of times and now the error did not show up again and I’ve always booted right into the desktop. It is now also working with the newer kernels.

Any clue why the amd module is not included automatically when a AMD gpu is detected?

5

I don’t know, sometimes it happens on the NVIDIA drivers as well, but the issue is that the MHWD is not adding the modules to the array.

6

Strange that this problem did not occur 100% of the time, right?
This randomness is the most irritating thing to me…

7

Try this… does the issue arise only when rebooting or from cold boot?

  • Power the system completely down and start, does the issue occur?
  • Restart the system but NOT from cold boot
  • Restart the system using the terminal; sudo shutdown -r now
8

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