Troubleshooting Linux Problems
journal
The journal is where systems with the systemd init system store their logfiles. journalctl can show most of the errors occuring in the system.
SysRq
see also: Linux Kernel documentation on SysRq
# enable all SysRq features echo 1 | sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq > /dev/null
| 2 | 0x2 | enable control of console logging level |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | 0x4 | enable control of keyboard (SAK, unraw) |
| 8 | 0x8 | enable debugging dumps of processes etc. |
| 16 | 0x10 | enable sync command |
| 32 | 0x20 | enable remount read-only |
| 64 | 0x40 | enable signalling of processes (term, kill, oom-kill) |
| 128 | 0x80 | allow reboot/poweroff |
| 256 | 0x100 | allow nicing of all RT tasks |
solutions to common problems
CD burning doesn't work with BD burners
Try disabling Stream Recording, it's enabled by default in xfburn for all Blu-Ray writers and will kill your CDs. Only enable it with BDs.
encryption-related tasks take a long time
Install haveged for more entropy generation.
Plank panel doesn't show active applications
If you start the panel in the terminal the following error message can occur: g_dbus_proxy_set_default_timeout: assertion 'G_IS_DBUS_PROXY (proxy)' failed
Solve it by starting plank via dbus-launch plank.
changing permissions not allowed for user root
Immutable bit might be set.
chattr -i
D-Bus broker doesn't start properly
Possible error messages:
systemd[11487]: dbus-broker.service: Start request repeated too quickly. systemd[11487]: dbus-broker.service: Failed with result 'protocol'. systemd[11487]: Failed to start D-Bus User Message Bus. gnome-keyring-daemon[11514]: couldn't connect to dbus session bus: Could not connect: Connection refused dbus-broker-launch[1170]: Activation request for 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry' failed. gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file dbus-broker-launch[1290]: Activation request for 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry' failed. dbus-broker-launch[1582]: Activation request for 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry' failed.
Solve with enabling D-Bus for the user:
systemctl --user enable dbus-daemon.service
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed
Errors may include:
xdg-desktop-portal[2779]: Failed to create secret proxy xdg-desktop-portal[2779]: Failed to get application states: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.Failed: Could not get window list
Solution: Remove xdg-desktop-portal(-gtk) packages.
AT-SPI related errors
bamfdaemon[5470]: AT-SPI: Could not obtain desktop path or name dbus-broker-launch[5425]: Activation request for 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry' failed. bamfdaemon[5470]: atk-bridge: GetRegisteredEvents returned message with unknown signature bamfdaemon[5470]: atk-bridge: get_device_events_reply: unknown signature dbus-broker-launch[5425]: Activation request for 'org.a11y.atspi.Registry' failed.
Solution:
rm /etc/xdg/autostart/at-spi-dbus-bus.desktop
Drivers / Hardware
AMD RX Vega 56/64
doesn't boot on Arch Linux
downgrade linux-firmware to version 20181218.0f22c85-1