A DuckDuckGo search shows that users have had issues with low entropy, a possible kernel bug, could cause slow boot times. While booting, try moving the mouse around or hitting random keys and see if the boot time improves. There are workarounds for low entropy.

Personally, I would try ruling out the lightdm.service by disabling it and trying to log in with a tty shell and then starting your DE with

startx

Verify that your user has an apropos ~/.xinitrc file for your DE before doing so. Or try installing a different DM. No issues here with Lightdm and Xfce in either Antergos or vanilla Arch.

What’s the output of …?

$ systemd-analyze critical-chain

I was playing around with sddm last week and had really long boot times before switching back to lightdm.

what DM are you using?

I have a Haswell Intel CPU with intel-ucode installed in a multi-boot system. Grub2 is only installed on my Antergos drive with only root and swap paritions on my other two disks, which include Xubuntu on drive sdb and Vanilla Arch on drive sdc. So no boot partitions on sdb and sdc, just /boot directories. I have os-prober installed in Antergos and updated grub in Antergos after installing the other OSs.

[[email protected] ~]$ lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 223.6G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   200M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0   256M  0 part /boot
├─sda3   8:3    0 215.5G  0 part /
└─sda4   8:4    0   7.6G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   0 223.6G  0 disk 
├─sdb1   8:17   0 216.1G  0 part 
└─sdb2   8:18   0   7.5G  0 part 
sdc      8:32   0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sdc1   8:33   0 102.6G  0 part 
└─sdc2   8:34   0   9.3G  0 part 
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  

When I run the following commmand in Antergos and Xubuntu, the updated microcode driver is loaded:

[[email protected] ~]$ dmesg | grep microcode
[    0.000000] microcode: microcode updated early to revision 0x24, date = 2018-01-21
[    0.398111] microcode: sig=0x306c3, pf=0x2, revision=0x24
[    0.398272] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2.

But running the same command in my Vanilla Arch, I get the following error and the updated microcode isn’t loaded:

[[email protected] ~]$ dmesg | grep microcode
[    0.000000] [Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x22 (or later)
[    0.362059] microcode: sig=0x306c3, pf=0x2, revision=0x1c
[    0.362176] microcode: Microcode Update Driver: v2.2.

So I changed the following last line below in the Vanilla Arch menuentry from initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img to initrd /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img in /etc/grub.d/40_custom and now the microcode gets loaded correctly. Below is my copy and paste into /etc/grub.d/40_custom, and you can see the uncommented line is what was originally created with os-prober in /boot/grub/grub.cfg when updating grub in Antergos:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry 'Arch Linux (on /dev/sdc1)' --class arch --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f' {
        insmod part_gpt
        insmod ext2
        set root='hd2,gpt1'
        if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
          search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd2,gpt1 --hint-efi=hd2,gpt1 --hint-baremetal=ahci2,gpt1  41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f
        else
          search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f
        fi
        linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sdc1
        initrd /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
        #initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
}
submenu 'Advanced options for Arch Linux (on /dev/sdc1)' $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-advanced-41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f' {
        menuentry 'Arch Linux (on /dev/sdc1)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-/boot/vmlinuz-linux--41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f' {
                insmod part_gpt
                insmod ext2
                set root='hd2,gpt1'
                if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
                  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd2,gpt1 --hint-efi=hd2,gpt1 --hint-baremetal=ahci2,gpt1  41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f
                else
                  search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 41a2c403-015b-4edc-9433-3b39cbbf665f
                fi
                linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sdc1
		initrd /boot/intel-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
                #initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
        }
}

But now I have separate two separate Vanilla Arch menuentry when booting into grub - one that doesn’t load the microcode and the other that does. I have Grub Customizer installed as well - removing these is easy if I want to go this route, but I’d rather have a more “hands on” approach. Is there a cleaner or better way to do this boot all drives considering that I will have to update grub on the Antergos drive every time a new kernel update is installed?

Thanks for all the help guys. I appreciate the time. I’m going to go ahead and marked this as “solved”. I ended up setting up a Session and Startup command nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode=“nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }” as a work around, removed my kernel parameter changes, and left my 20-nvidia.conf file as below

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Nvidia Card"
    Driver "nvidia"
    VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
    Option "NoLogo" "true"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier      "nvidia"
#    Option          "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositio$
    Option          "TripleBuffer"                  "on"
    Option          "AllowIndirectGLXProtocol"      "off"
EndSection

I installed Xubuntu out of curiosity and experienced the same issues. I did figure out why I have having freezing issues with some games though. In Steam, I ended up turning on Vsync and now have no issues, including no more screen tearing.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA/Troubleshooting#Blackscreen_at_X_startup_.2F_Machine_poweroff_at_X_shutdown
So i amended my kernel parameters with rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1. It only worked for one reboot, but if I leave “metamodes” “nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }” commented inside 20-nvidia.conf and run the command in Session and Startup, I am able to boot into my XFCE DE. Before any configuration failed unless the “metamodes…” was uncommented.

Team Fortress doesn’t require much GPU. In fact, my wimpy laptop with integrated Intel graphics plays it just fine and on a Steam game server connected via wifi. I still have some freezing on my desktop/NVIDIA, but not nearly as bad. I still don’t believe my NVIDIA is working 100%, but better.

It appears I’m not the only one having this problem. Even one guy using Arch and XFCE is have the identical problem (post #11): https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/1029381/linux/black-screen-at-desktop-login-gtx-750-ti-390-25-/post/5239770/

Also, how do I correctly add the nvidia module to mkinitcpio.conf? The wiki isn’t clear to me if i need to throw a command after editing the file.

Thanks for everyone’s help!

@joekamprad said in NVIDIA Issues:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | curl -F [email protected] https://ptpb.pw/?u=1

Here you go: https://ptpb.pw/9vm5

disabled Intel Integrated Graphics in EFI/BIOS and still getting black screen. And still getting

[[email protected] ~]$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | curl -F [email protected] https://ptpb.pw/?u=1
https://ptpb.pw/r6V5
[[email protected] ~]$ 

here’s my /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

install i915 /usr/bin/false
install intel_agp /usr/bin/false
install viafb /usr/bin/false

i’ll check BIOS.

@joekamprad yes. removed.

[[email protected] ~]$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | curl -F [email protected] https://ptpb.pw/?u=1
https://ptpb.pw/r6V5
[[email protected] ~]$