Hello.
After Stable update 2025-12 / 2026-01 all TTY consoles (Ctrl+Alt+F2…F6) fully filled with “<” symbols.
All non-readable.
Kernel 5.4.302. Downgrade kernel to 5.4.299 solved problem.
Unfortunately, at the moment I can only use kernel 5.4.xxx.
How to fix?
My vconsole.conf:
# This is the fallback vconsole configuration provided by systemd.
#KEYMAP=us
FONT=UniCyr_8x16
[test_user@manjarobox ~]$ LC_ALL=C pacman -Q manjaro-release
manjaro-release 26.0.0-1
[test_user@manjarobox ~]$ LC_ALL=C uname -a
Linux manjarobox 5.4.302-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Dec 4 08:13:06 UTC 2025 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I have a similar thing with neverending ^@-characters (like CTRL+@)occasionally. I wonder if the difference is from keyboard layout or from something else. If it starts after boot up, it affects both tty-login and SDDM-login, making it impossible to do either. Luckily, it usually starts either by opening a new Konsole -instance, or during shutdown after the GUI is shut down. It might continue after a reboot, or (as is usual) not.
It hasn’t happened in a while now, so I’d remember thought am not sure, that it didn’t affect any applications besides Konsole in Plasma. Now that I think about it, I think it hasn’t happened even once after I switched to zsh instead of bash.
I am surprised this is the first major problem running on unsupported kernels, especially this old. As all the binaries and libraries get upgraded around it.
LTS kernels of course get back patched for security, but sometimes functionality, at least to make it work properly.
What @Nachlese already said would be my first thing to try if possible.
I think it is your only option if you want a sane system moving forward. But even 5.X EOL is coming.
The previous version kernel 5.4.299 does not have this problem.
This means regression. It is unlikely that the EOL-kernel will be fixed.
But maybe there is a workaround?
The “workaround” is to install a more recent, still supported LTS kernel.
a bit strange:
I just did an update - and linux54
5.4.302-1 … is still listed as a suggested LTS kernel in the graphical Manjaro Settings Manager
although the update announcement seems to say different
I read it as: it will be EOL
Install a more recent kernel - you’ll kind of have to anyway at some point in the near future.
That is not the recommended method to install a kernel in Manjaro - the dedicated tool for that is mhwd-kernel
or the GUI variant of it
because with pacman, you might miss some kernel-modules for your graphics hardware, for example.
But it should work just the same.
As for your issue, I have no clue:
You only need the corresponding headers if you want to compile kernel modules - for DKMS for example.
However, it is highly recommended to switch to a truly up-to-date kernel (specifically using mhwd-kernel !). Either 6.12 or 6.18 (both LTS). If these run without problems for you, you shouldn’t use an older kernel.
Thanks to everyone who responded. I’ll look into upgrading the kernel as a possible solution.
In the meantime, I continue the experiment with 5.4.302.
I change the font in the console and this is what see:
