Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

hiddenpower · 2024-05-03 15:38:35

Hello I'm new to XFCE and recently made the switch on an old 2014 macbook pro with nvidia enabled. After some customization, it's been a delight and I got a UI that feels similar to MacOS even!

There's a couple pain points that I haven't been able to figure out that I may split into two posts. The first one that I'll talk about here is that the LUKS login screen has been sticky every since turning on autologin in lightdm. Even upon turning it off, the view (in image below) has stuck around. I don't have anything strongly against it, but the downside is that it won't render on my external monitor. So if I restart my laptop, it's a bit of a painful process to dedock it, reopen the device and login.

Image of simplified LUKS (or initramf?) login UI: https://imgur.com/a/Nqd9Mck.

I've tried adding init display scripts within the lightdm.conf as well to see if it's possible to trigger connecting to the montior from there, but then the display flashes (even with a do-nothing script), and I need to revert the change via live usb.

The second pain point is that the laptop won't ever sleep if I close the lid. It says I don't have enough swap and I've struggled to fix this. Can make a separate thread on it when I focus on this more.

Thanks for the help!

ToZ · 2024-05-03 16:27:11

Hello and welcome.

The challenge with your first issue, is that all of that happens before Xfce starts. Xfce is a userspace environment, meaning you have to log in first before any of its components are executed. You don't mention which distro you use, but it might be best to ask at your distro's forum for assistance for this issue.

The second issue could be related to an Xfce mis-configuration. Can you post back:

the contents of your ~/.xsession-errors file after a failed suspend attempt (if that file exists)
the output of your system's current boot log file. If you are running systemd, that would be:
```
sudo journalctl -b 0 --no-pager
```

Some xfce4-power-manager information;

xfce4-power-manager --dump
xfconf-query -c xfce4-power-manager -lv

hiddenpower · 2024-07-01 15:59:16

ToZ wrote:

Hello and welcome.
The challenge with your first issue, is that all of that happens before Xfce starts. Xfce is a userspace environment, meaning you have to log in first before any of its components are executed. You don't mention which distro you use, but it might be best to ask at your distro's forum for assistance for this issue.
The second issue could be related to an Xfce mis-configuration. Can you post back:
the contents of your ~/.xsession-errors file after a failed suspend attempt (if that file exists)
the output of your system's current boot log file. If you are running systemd, that would be:
sudo journalctl -b 0 --no-pager
Some xfce4-power-manager information;
xfce4-power-manager --dump
xfconf-query -c xfce4-power-manager -lv

Thank you for the reply and sorry about the delay. I got a bit disheartened but pulled out the laptop again this weekend and want try fixing it piece by piece. These are the four requested snapshots:

xsessions-errors-snapshot: https://pastebin.com/XVRVtJnU

boot-log-snapshot https://pastebin.com/q7rFWPr6

xfce-power-manager-snapshot: https://pastebin.com/zz6pjSzq

xconf-query-power-manager-snapshot https://pastebin.com/Ccd2ciDd

hiddenpower · 2024-07-27 02:56:06

Incremental progress. I updated my kernel and found the pretty login rendered, but after login it was a dulled screen. I rebuilt initramfs with dracut, and I've made it through.

Still would love to get sleep mode working though. Any insights on the above? Thank you

ToZ · 2024-07-27 10:29:42

hiddenpower wrote:

The second pain point is that the laptop won't ever sleep if I close the lid. It says I don't have enough swap and I've struggled to fix this. Can make a separate thread on it when I focus on this more.

It looks like you have xfce4-power-manager set to "Hibernate" on lid close, but your system is not set up to properly support hibernation (you don't have an adequate swap file). Try changing the "When laptop lid is closed" action setting in xfce4-power-manager to "Suspend" instead.

Edit: Or alternatively, since you appear to be using Fedora and the brtfs filesystem, check out this article on how to create swap space for hibernation.

Last edited by ToZ (2024-07-27 10:33:05)

hiddenpower · 2024-07-28 15:21:35

ToZ wrote:

hiddenpower wrote:
The second pain point is that the laptop won't ever sleep if I close the lid. It says I don't have enough swap and I've struggled to fix this. Can make a separate thread on it when I focus on this more.
It looks like you have xfce4-power-manager set to "Hibernate" on lid close, but your system is not set up to properly support hibernation (you don't have an adequate swap file). Try changing the "When laptop lid is closed" action setting in xfce4-power-manager to "Suspend" instead.
Edit: Or alternatively, since you appear to be using Fedora and the brtfs filesystem, check out this article on how to create swap space for hibernation.

Thank you, I ended up discovering the fix on my own yesterday and spoke to soon. I needed to create a swapfile following specifically a procedure for brtfs as you pointed out. I then found that I needed to disable some other 8gb swap that existed called zram0. At that point the newly created 20gb swapfile was being picked up. I think I needed to make a few SElinux tweaks as well.

I then successfully got "suspend-to-hibernate after 1 hour" working by overwriting the ExecStart command for the suspend unit file since I couldn't find a toggle in the DE for suspend to hibernate. My understanding is that laptops drain quite a bit faster on suspend with linux than using MacOS

I disabled power profiles daemon, and installed tlp and thermald. Haven't decided if this is better for battery support yet.

I created a udev rule that executes xrandr automatically whenever i plug into my monitor only enabling one of the two, and I think I'm getting a perf bonus from that.

*Current issues* (in the event you happen to know)
I haven't figured out how to reboot onto the external monitor with laptop lid closed yet.

And even though I have a visual LUKS login now with the new kernel, I find that logging in is very slow. The viewport is gray and dimmed upon logging in for a minute. If I hit a key like opening the menu, it'll trigger the desktop to show. I've also find that waking from suspend whenever I close the lid and open it, is similarly slow, taking about a minute to get back to the lock screen.

Thanks for the patience and help. I've only had the downtime to chip away in spurts, but it feels like a major leap already in usability. With all the customizations available to XFCE, I've been able to make it really close to MacOS including getting the command key to work similarly via custom bindings using xkeysnail

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#1 2024-05-03 15:38:35

Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

#2 2024-05-03 16:27:11

Re: Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

#3 2024-07-01 15:59:16

Re: Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

#4 2024-07-27 02:56:06

Re: Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

#5 2024-07-27 10:29:42

Re: Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

#6 2024-07-28 15:21:35

Re: Sticky LUKs login UI that won't display on external monitor.

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