black screen with cursor after login

brent

elfprince I am still hanging in with 500MB! 😎
Just keep deleting extra entries from time to time.

so self-maintenance is the key to 512MB? In a way what you are doing is what seems a minority of users are doing....if 2GB is the new 512...I'd rather train myself to do what you are doing than accumulate enough stuff that will hurt me later.
you do your cleaning with that terminal tool, or trash entries right out of the filesystem?

elfprince

brent I am using this method >> https://github.com/getsolus/help-center-docs/issues/624

synth-ruiner

on the Budgie black screen, I noticed that the cursor turns into a text selection cursor in a thin line across the middle of the screen, like it's trying to display some text like an error message popup or something.

interestingly, i3 is working again now, so I have two WMs I can use…

and I can't seem to connect to my wireless network - the network manager applet just spins for a while and fails, never prompting me for the password for some reason.

I get that the broad consensus is to reinstall, and I probably will when I have time, but it'd still be handy to know where I should be looking in terms of logs/journalctl.

thanks, everyone, for your help so far.

pomon

Log in to Budgie, switch to TTY with Ctrl+Alt+F2, log in there, then check what Budgie service: systemctl list-units | grep -i budgie

This might show some errors: journalctl --since "10 minutes ago" -u lightdm -u budgie -xe

synth-ruiner and I can't seem to connect to my wireless network - the network manager applet just spins for a while and fails, never prompting me for the password for some reason.

Check: systemctl status NetworkManager

synth-ruiner

pomon thanks so much!

systemctl list-units | grep -i budgie had no output - I couldn't see budgie listed in systemctl list-units either, for obvious reasons. but that seems telling.

in journalctl I only saw one red line (I assume these are errors): gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file - sounds significant… (edit… just the keyring daemon, and this is pretty normal apparently?)

pomon

Little content. Not pasting the results of these commands, review them and see if you notice anything worrying. You can change the tail number to any value.

journalctl -b -xe --no-pager | tail -200
journalctl -b | grep -iE "budgie|panel|wm|gnome|dbus|session|error|fail|segfault" | tail -100
cat ~/.xsession-errors | tail -100

What about NetworkManager in i3?

synth-ruiner

pomon thanks, I'll go over these as soon as I have time. the NetworkManager applet problem is the same on i3. I was able to connect via the command line using wpa_supplicant (I could see on the router admin panel that I was connected) but no internet, I think it doesn't automatically do DHCP so I'd need to figure out how to do that as well and the guide I was reading referred to a DHCP utility that I don't have installed. (is dnsmasq the one to use on Solus?)

oh, and I had to use the nl80211 driver - wext didn't work. not sure if that means anything.

pomon

But you didn't give me the output of systemctl status NetworkManager.

synth-ruiner

pomon Apologies. (e: this is in Openbox)

● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: enabled)

Drop-In: /usr/lib64/systemd/system/service.d

└─10-timeout-abort.conf

/usr/lib64/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service.d

└─NetworkManager-ovs.conf

Active: active (running) since Fri 2026-05-15 08:52:29 BST; 1 day 3h ago

Invocation: 2c4312be33c94265bc5d4316f683b9be

Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)

Main PID: 1260 (NetworkManager)

Tasks: 4 (limit: 19006)

Memory: 12.6M (peak: 14.8M)

CPU: 9.571s

CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service

└─1260 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon

i3 has the same output, I think.

● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager

Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: enabled)

Drop-In: /usr/lib64/systemd/system/service.d

└─10-timeout-abort.conf

/usr/lib64/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service.d

└─NetworkManager-ovs.conf

Active: active (running) since Sat 2026-05-16 13:00:26 BST; 1min 17s ago

Invocation: 30b387d17fad4203b77ea3ba9cd9a9fe

Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)

Main PID: 1283 (NetworkManager)

Tasks: 4 (limit: 19006)

Memory: 11.1M (peak: 13M)

CPU: 280ms

CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service

└─1283 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon

pomon

NetworkManager service is active, so we need to look further. What does nmcli d and nmcli c show? Check the logs: journalctl -u NetworkManager -n 50

You can try: sudo dhcpcd <device_name> <device_name> is the wireless interface name you see in nmcli d (for example, wlan0 or wlp1s0).

synth-ruiner

pomon network names changed, but here you go! ("Wired connection 3" is me tethering my phone)

max@max-desktop ~> nmcli d
DEVICE          TYPE      STATE                   CONNECTION
enp0s26u1u4     ethernet  connected               Wired connection 3
lo              loopback  connected (externally)  lo
docker0         bridge    connected (externally)  docker0
wlp2s0          wifi      disconnected            --
p2p-dev-wlp2s0  wifi-p2p  disconnected            --
enp0s25         ethernet  unavailable             --

max@max-desktop ~> nmcli c
NAME                   UUID                                  TYPE      DEVICE
Wired connection 3     fadd71e7-b367-356b-89e5-51ae79050d1c  ethernet  enp0s26u1u4
lo                     3fbb909a-4c5f-47e3-9e2f-5b4b97af5551  loopback  lo
docker0                d11993f6-a821-4870-8b6e-8899d635576d  bridge    docker0
OLD NETWORK 1          003ea219-98e2-4b53-855a-f974be730657  wifi      --
OLD NETWORK 2          37c30e7c-aa55-4387-b186-5d1bbe03cee6  wifi      --
MY NETWORK             5416d5da-a3fb-47f5-8b0c-2d6d30ef8c8b  wifi      --
VPN NAME 1             e3529fb7-a0eb-4554-a43c-9804951f53e9  vpn       --
VPN NAME 2             7a53944d-60d1-47fb-912b-0ce201c27007  vpn       --
VPN NAME 3             e818243a-cf1a-4c79-a597-cc3c1fc1de1a  vpn       --
Wired connection 1     0fec5b65-bd4e-3314-9cd2-a4c63e6e14af  ethernet  --
Wired connection 2     b3fd6b7f-65c2-35c1-80fd-7fadd4ec9e34  ethernet  --

a connection attempt (via the network manager applet) seen in journalctl:

May 17 15:24:10 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027850.2673] device (wlp2s0): Activation: starting connection 'MY NETWORK' (5416d5da-a3fb-47f5-8b0>
May 17 15:24:10 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027850.2674] audit: op="connection-activate" uuid="5416d5da-a3fb-47f5-8b0c-2d6d30ef8c8b" name="MY NETW>
May 17 15:24:10 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027850.2675] device (wlp2s0): state change: disconnected -> prepare (reason 'none', managed-type: 'ful>
May 17 15:24:10 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027850.2679] device (wlp2s0): state change: prepare -> config (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
May 17 15:24:10 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027850.2682] device (wlp2s0): Activation: (wifi) access point 'MY NETWORK' has security, but secrets are required.
May 17 15:24:10 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027850.2682] device (wlp2s0): state change: config -> need-auth (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full')
May 17 15:24:35 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <warn>  [1779027875.2727] device (wlp2s0): no secrets: No agents were available for this request.
May 17 15:24:35 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027875.2728] device (wlp2s0): state change: need-auth -> failed (reason 'no-secrets', managed-type: 'f>
May 17 15:24:35 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <warn>  [1779027875.2730] device (wlp2s0): Activation: failed for connection 'MY NETWORK'
May 17 15:24:35 max-desktop NetworkManager[1283]: <info>  [1779027875.2732] device (wlp2s0): state change: failed -> disconnected (reason 'none', managed-type: 'full>

does "secrets required" refer to a password or something else? I wasn't prompted for one.

I was able to connect with wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd, thank you 🙂 although it's not showing as connected in the network manager applet.

synth-ruiner

pomon Yes and yes. I get the usual "Enable networking, Enable Wi-Fi, Enable Notifications, Connection Information, Edit Connections, About" (they're all enabled). "Edit connections" pops up nm-connection-editor as well.

TraceyC

ℹ Moderator Note
I've split the WiFi into a separate thread.
We request that in Support, users stick to one topic per thread and create new threads for different issues.
This keeps questions and solutions clear, both for you and for other members of the forum. Thanks.

Please reply about the WiFi issue in the other thread.

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