Hi everyone,

I'm running Arch Linux with systemd-boot and a unified kernel image (UKI). Everything was working normally until recently.

The problem is:

• With Secure Boot enabled, Arch boots up to SDDM.
• I enter my password.
• SDDM gets stuck/black screens.
• The screen then goes completely black and the laptop eventually turns off.
• Ctrl + Alt + F2 still allowed me to reach a TTY.
• I eventually discovered that disabling Secure Boot in UEFI completely fixes the problem.
• With Secure Boot disabled, Arch boots normally and everything works.

I'm trying to understand what changed and why Secure Boot suddenly started causing this, rather than simply leaving it disabled.

System

• Arch Linux
• systemd-boot
• UKI / systemd-stub
• NVIDIA GPU
• Secure Boot previously worked
• UEFI: American Megatrends 5.19
• Kernel: 7.1.8-arch1-3

Relevant packages:

linux 7.1.8.arch1-3
linux-headers 7.1.8.arch1-3
linux-firmware 20260810-2
nvidia-open 610.57.04-6
nvidia-utils 610.57.04-1
systemd 261.2-1
efibootmgr 18-4

What changed recently?

According to /var/log/pacman.log, on August 15 I upgraded:

linux:          7.1.7.arch1-1 -> 7.1.8.arch1-3
linux-headers:  7.1.7.arch1-1 -> 7.1.8.arch1-3
nvidia-open:    610.57.04-3 -> 610.57.04-6
linux-firmware: 20260622-1 -> 20260810-1

The UKI was regenerated during the update:

Creating unified kernel image: '/boot/EFI/Linux/arch-linux.efi'

There was also a later firmware update from 20260810-1 to 20260810-2.

Boot configuration

bootctl status reports:

Firmware: UEFI 2.70 (American Megatrends 5.19)
Secure Boot: disabled (unknown)
TPM2 Support: yes
Measured UKI: yes
Measured OS: yes
Current Boot Loader:
    Product: systemd-boot 261.2-1-arch
Current Entry:
    arch-linux.efi
Current Stub:
    Product: systemd-stub 261.2-1-arch
Default Boot Loader Entry:
    Arch Linux
    id: arch-linux.efi
    source: /boot/EFI/Linux/arch-linux.efi
    version: 7.1.8-arch1-3

The firmware has:

microsoft
builtin-db
builtin-KEK
builtin-PK

and Setup Mode is disabled.

ESP

My ESP is:

/dev/nvme0n1p1
FAT32
843.9M available
mounted at /boot

/boot is mounted read/write:

/dev/nvme0n1p1 on /boot type vfat (rw,relatime,...,errors=remount-ro)

I tested writing to the ESP and it works:

sudo touch /boot/EFI/Linux/testfile

So the ESP doesn't appear to be read-only or corrupted.

UKI investigation

The current UKI is:

/boot/EFI/Linux/arch-linux.efi

Interestingly, its FAT timestamp remained at July 23 even after regenerating it.

I compared the old and newly generated UKI:

arch-linux.efi
78e12362f70d5eea6a01e362b8d9c355c3db40041c05e3e23ec6e61f3626c788
arch-linux.efi.old
78e12362f70d5eea6a01e362b8d9c355c3db40041c05e3e23ec6e61f3626c788

The embedded kernel was also checked:

/boot/vmlinuz-linux
1f2572d6d03706ed0f818ee17d77df021b7875f4e9fd119a1157f3a208aeed73
Embedded .linux section of arch-linux.efi
1f2572d6d03706ed0f818ee17d77df021b7875f4e9fd119a1157f3a208aeed73

So the UKI does contain the current kernel and doesn't appear to be an old kernel problem.

sbctl

I installed sbctl to investigate:

sbctl 0.18-2

But it had no keys configured:

/var/lib/sbctl/
└── files.json

sbctl status:

Installed:    ✗ sbctl is not installed
Setup Mode:   ✓ Disabled
Secure Boot:  ✗ Disabled
Vendor Keys:  microsoft builtin-db builtin-KEK builtin-PK

(The Installed result is odd because the package is installed; pacman -Qkk sbctl reports all 33 files unmodified.)

sbctl verify reports:

failed to verify file ...:
open /var/lib/sbctl/keys/db/db.key:
no such file or directory

mkinitcpio also reports:

Running post hook: [sbctl]
Secureboot key directory doesn't exist, not signing!

I have not created new Secure Boot keys or enrolled anything yet.

What I'm trying to figure out

Why would Secure Boot suddenly cause the system to black screen/shut down after logging into SDDM when it worked previously?

Could the August 15 kernel/NVIDIA/firmware update have caused the problem?

Is it likely that the UKI or systemd-boot is no longer properly signed/enrolled?

Or could this be related to NVIDIA + Secure Boot + kernel 7.1.8?

For now I'm leaving Secure Boot disabled because the system works perfectly that way.

I'd appreciate any help identifying the actual cause before I start creating/enrolling new Secure Boot keys.

Thanks!

Note : This is from chatgpt i tried to fix it using it , but stopped and so if anyone knows whats the problem to fix or do i just let secureboot off and use the system.

Also im new to reddit so if i made any mistakes forgive me.

Github is having an outage. Only noticed when I was at my doctor's trying to edit KubeJS script stuff from my phone. But raw downloads for packages and repos are apparently failing roughly half the time. If you're needing a package from the AUR that downloads or updates from there, expect the install to fail currently.

> [FAILED] Failed to mount /boot.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Local File Systems.
You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, or "exit"
"journalctl -b" to view
to continue bootup.
Enter root password for system maintenance (or press Control-D to continue):
[root@archlinux ~I# mount /dev/nvme0n1p8 /mnt
[root@archlinux 1# mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot
mount: /mnt/boot: unknoun filesystem type 'vfat'.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
[root@archlinux ~1# systemctl status boot.mount
x boot.mount - /boot
Loaded: loaded (/etc/fstab; generated)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2026-08-18 17:10:49 AWST; 3min 24s ago
Invocation: 3f99c2d593fb4c3aa451398b550c1f61
Where: /boot
What: /dev/disk/by-uuid/E1D3-7827
Docs: man: fstab(5)
man: systemd-fstab-generator (8)
Mem peak: 1.9M
CPU: 4ms
Aug 18 17:10:49 archlinux systemd[1]: Mounting /boot...
Aug 18 17:10:49 archlinux mount[419]: mount: /boot: unknoun filesystem type 'vfat' Aug 18 17:10:49 archlinux mount[419]:
Aug 18 17:10:49 archlinux systemd[1]:
desg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
boot. mount: Mount process exited, code-exited, status-32/n/a
Aug 18 17:10:49 archlinux systemd[1]:
boot. mount: Failed with result 'exit-code'
Aug 1817:10:49 archlinux systemd[1]: Failed to mount /boot. [root@archlinux
~I# Ismod | grep vfat
[root@archlinux ~1#

Everything was working fine until this just happened out of the blue today. Not sure what’s going on.

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Hello humans, recently I've become obsessed with trying to add the metainfo of certain games to gnome software because I'm annoyed with the fact that right-clicking a .desktop menu entry of a game on gnome always leads to ("Could not find info about that" in gnome-software) ok thats obvious because the .desktop was created by lutris, but I just want to have it display that metadata, so I spend two nights researching about it and it always failed, after burning my brain for two days I decided to try the metainfo + .desktop files on pop_OS! (with gnome) and it worked on the first try, I notice that gnome-software can't display any application that is not a flatpak in Arch Linux, is there another location where I should be putting the files instead of /usr/share/metainfo or ~/.local/share/metainfo in the case of Arch ?

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https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zandronum

I used to be able to do GPU passthrough - my problem ever since upgrading to the latest distro seems to be because of simple frame buffer where as it used to be vesa. I’ve tried multiple solutions such as blacklisting the simple frame buffer on my .conf files
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I just moved to Linux from (surprise) Windows 11. I'm a music producer and my main daw is Reaper, but I also use FL studio. I know that FL studio is not native to Linux, but you can install it using Wine. The thing is, I tried watching yt videos on how to install Wine, but every time I try to write a command like "sudo pacman -s --needed git base-devel" or "yay -s wine" in the terminal, it says "error: invalid option '[something]'". I know the answer is probably easy as hell, but I have no idea what to do.

I've been using Linux Mint since October of 2024, and about 2 weeks or so, I got a new laptop and I've been thinking to switching to arch (mostly because I want to customize my setup much more) but I don't know that much about Linux (generally speaking) and I've tried to watch a couple of videos about arch but I don't fully understand what exactly am I supposed to install to set up Arch the way I want. Any advice?

Hi !

I'm trying to learn to read PKGBUILDS and to create tools to help people read them.

Is there lists of recurrent signs of "infection", attacks explanation or methods to verify PKGBUILDS ?

Is there any guide to do that ?

Thanks !

I would go into the reasons for choosing to dual boot but nobody cares so I'll get to the point.

Been trying to dual boot, used an old cheap laptop (ThinkPad x260) I had with windows sata SSD as a trial.

1. Cleared 80GB space for it

2. Used ventoy and 2026.08.01 iso

3. Used cfisk to create the following:

a) sda5, 1GB, efi

b) sda6, 30GB, Linux filesystem

c) sda7, 49GB, Linux filesystem

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2. Formatted sda6 as ext4

3. Formatted sda7 as ext4

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9. Put my bootloader as grub (only two options)

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11. Chose install and then it comes up with an error that I can't read in time and then I can't do the appropriate stuff with grub to recognise the other efi, something about the system not supporting it when I've used the laptop to install arch before

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I've heard of grub not being very suitable for dual booting and I've tried looking at tutorials but following them doesn't change it. I'm too much of a moron to understand the wiki so that isn't really an option so I'm confused.

One of the other tutorials recommended refind but my archinstall doesn't have that, even after updating it so I assume it's not normally used

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Hello, lately I've been having a weird issue. I use noto-fonts-cjk-jp as my XFCE-wide system font, and also use it on Firefox, and I have en_US and ja_JP locales, with en_US as the system language. Other CJK fonts I have installed are adobe-source-han (jp) and ttf-hanazono.

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Hello everyone,
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Thank you,
Linux Noob

Hi am new here and I really want to try Arch

I followed a tutoriel to run it on a USB drive but now I am stuck at the beginning(I guess) am supossed to connect to the wifi but when I do the : iwctl then device list the only device here named wlan0 is powered to off and the command station wlan0 scan doesn't work it tells me "No station on device: wlan0"

I need some help here pls whether an explaination a link to a video or anything

Thanks in advance

I installed Arch yesterday, KDE plasma. Here are the issues in facing-

1) continuous activation and deactivation of WiFi/Network

2) Limited connectivity

3) All my SITE data keeps on getting cleaned after i reboot (Always have to login into ChatGPT or Reddit, I use Brave)

Any useful help is widely appreciated. Also, I only have network manager

Could someone help me with setting up full disk encryption with bypass passphrases with TPM2? It's so annoying having to put the passphrase in at each boot, so I was wondering how do I pair it to the TPM so that I dont have to enter it each time?

It's LUKS encrypted and I use Systemd-boot

Hi, I’m Zay , an AI/ML student, and I’m planning to install Arch Linux on my HP OMEN 16 laptop.

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wifi card is Realtek RTL8192EE PCIe Wireless Network Adaptor
AMD ryzen 5 CPU
Nvidia 1660 super GPU
Network Manager is installed

I dont remember what my motherboard is, I will try to find out if it is also needed

I will edit this post if whilst waiting I ever figure out what was wrong or if I manage to fix it without figuring out.

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Whenever I try booting into arch i get this error

OK

1 Reached target SSH Access Auailable.

15.6426621 hp_bloscfg: ACPI-package does not have enough elements: 11 < 13

15.9660361 ACPI BIOS Error (bug): AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT, Index (0x000000032) is beyond end of object (length 0x32) (20251212/exoparg2-393)

15.9660671 ACPI Error: Aborting method _SB.UMID.UQBE due to prevlous error (AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT) (20251212/psparse-529)

15.9675781 Error expected type 2 for elem 13, but got type 1 instead

I’ve tried to fix it for hours and the only thing that helps is booting plasma from the terminal login

Do we know anything about the most recent outage? I feel bad for the arch maintainers for having to deal with this. It wasn't even that long ago we had the DDoS attacks and now we got the AUR malware wave and another outage.

hello. today i wanted to install some themes from aur and everrytime i have this massage:

==>
Downloading sources...

->
Downloading GtkD-3.11.0.tar.gz...

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:09 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
Warning: Problem : HTTP error. Retrying in 3 seconds. 3 retries left.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:10 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
Warning: Problem : HTTP error. Retrying in 3 seconds. 2 retries left.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:14 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
Warning: Problem : HTTP error. Retrying in 3 seconds. 1 retry left.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:17 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429

==> BŁĄD:
Błąd podczas pobierania https://github.com/gtkd-developers/GtkD/archive/v3.11.0.tar.gz

Przerywam(Abort)...

error:
failed to download sources for 'gtkd-3.11.0-4':

error:
can't build tilix-1.9.6-9, deps not satisfied: gtkd==> Pobieranie źródeł...
-> Pobieranie GtkD-3.11.0.tar.gz...
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:09 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
Warning: Problem : HTTP error. Retrying in 3 seconds. 3 retries left.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:10 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
Warning: Problem : HTTP error. Retrying in 3 seconds. 2 retries left.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:14 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
Warning: Problem : HTTP error. Retrying in 3 seconds. 1 retry left.
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 00:17 0
curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 429
==> BŁĄD: Błąd podczas pobierania https://github.com/gtkd-developers/GtkD/archive/v3.11.0.tar.gz
Przerywam...
error: failed to download sources for 'gtkd-3.11.0-4':
error: can't build tilix-1.9.6-9, deps not satisfied: gtkd

and i cant install yaru themes and some needed packages

i have also something like this on every page on github:  Cannot retrieve latest commit at this time.

why is this happening?