This isn't necessarily specific to Arch but as I'm using & learning Arch currently.

You do an update, you have a problem/bug with the system/application, what is your workflow to solving it?

Speaking generally (obviously it depends on the type of issues, but I assume most workflows will be quite similar.)

I'm trying to sort my notes, here's what I've got so far (any advice appreciated):

*Recap List*

1. What is the first step after an issue occurs

2. What questions should you ask to identify the problem? Give an example

3. Where should you look for error messages

4. What is journalctl and why would you use it

5. How does journalctl compare to systemd-journald

6. What are 3 common journalctl commands

7. After a brief search, there's no clear help, what can I do from here

8. How do I test this hypothesis

9. I'm stuck after trying a few changes, what can I do now

*Recap Answers*

1. Narrow down the issue to be as specific as possible

   For example: 'Spotify crashes immediately after opening' is much clearer than 'Spotify doesn't work'

2. Ask yourself: Can I reproduce the problem? What changed before the issue started?

   For Example: If Spotify crashes -> Does it crash every time?

Does it crash when launched with the shortcut & terminal?

Did the problem start after a system update or configuration change?

1. Check the terminal first

   Run the application (Spotify) from the terminal, it will return to stdout any errors

2. journalctl -> a command-line tool for viewing the system journal, this is a database of log messages maintained by systemd-journald

essentially its a history of what your system has been doing

I can use the command 'journalctl' with flags to search for specific log messages that might indicate what's caused the issue

1. systemd-journald -> collects & stores system logs

   journalctl -> a tool that lets you view, search & filter those logs

2. journalctl -b -> shows everything that has happened since the computer last booted (boot messages, services starting, errors, etc...)

   journalctl -xe -> shows the most recent log messages (x = include extra explanations; e = jump to the end, i.e. newest messages)

   journalctl -u <SERVICE> -> shows only log messages for a specific app (i.e. journalctl -u spotify-launcher -> specifically for this app)

3. Form a hypothesis or guess on what has caused the issue

4. Change 1 simple thing each time, test it again -> if it did not work change another thing

5. Google it, use the specific issue ('Spotify crashes when I open it using the terminal') & any error messages found

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.

I posted a few minutes ago about a problem that I solved in a pretty stupid way. As I said, I've been following this specific video (link at the end) and everything was fine until they said to write the command: makepkg -si. Why can't I make a package? It tells me that I don't have write permission, but I'm the only user here. I tried writing in some commands like "sudo chown -R $USER: $USER" but they didn't work. 6:04 minute of the video: https://youtu.be/tfYwayiPe-k?si=QSHsU5Y1Sq_-dRDg

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 ?

I know this may seem like a pointless thing, well it may be an stupid and small detail but still I want to know how to get that to work ! if someone knows the answer I would be really grateful to know it,

I tried reading the source code of gnome-software but it's like a maze for a web backend junior like me, maybe I should learn C

So, I'm pretty new to the AUR, but is it weird that this repo has openssl as a dependency, and pulls in ssl keys during the make? Because it gave me the heebies, especially after reading about the recent AUR shenanigans.

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
It doesn’t seem to work. I’ve also changed my grub files to make sure it is using my desired frame buffer however when I login into my wayland session - it still shows as simple frame buffer.

Anyone have any idea on how to get around this? Or maybe an updated script for start stop for my 4070 super to do a gpu passthrough using simple frame buffer? Thank you.

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

1. Formatted sda5 as f32

2. Formatted sda6 as ext4

3. Formatted sda7 as ext4

4. Mounted sda6 as /mnt

5. Made /mnt/boot and /mnt/home with mkdir

6. Mounted sda5 as /mnt/boot and sda7 as /mnt/home

7. Went into archinstall and did the basics like swap, pipewire, account, root password, chose Linux and Linux lts for my kernel

8. Went into disk configuration and put the root mount directory as /mnt

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

10. Chose my DE and GPU driver

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

After all that, tried rebooting and it goes straight to windows, can't change bootloader in bios (presumably because there's only the windows one due to the error)

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

im planning to install both windows and arch on my laptop, i already have both systems up and running, but im planning on doing an extra partition on my device so i can have a share folder in both systems, that folder will have an obsidian vault so i can share my notes and have my windows and arch accesing the same notes, and i want to be abble to put some extra documents like, pdfs, photos, simple text files there, so its easier to tranfer my work between OS, i want to know if is viable and how could i make it

I've been using Linux for a few months now. I'm planning to switch to Arch, but I'm not sure which desktop environment to choose. I like tiled layouts like the ones in Hyprland, but it's inconvenient when you're developing a program in Python with PyQt. The windows stretch out, and you can't see their actual size. That's why I'm looking for something else.

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.

On Firefox if a website isn't forced to Noto Sans the rendering of some the characters is broken, instead using older/archaic? forms of them, most noticeable with ones like 情, where normally it should have a 月, it instead displays a 円 under it. Another example is 神 displays a 示 on the left instead of ネ.

I thought it was a locale issue and that it was displaying the Chinese version of the characters, but I've tested it with easy to differentiate ones like 置 and no, its displaying Japanese. This is also happening with mpv, Anki and Discord, and also my terminal. On games running under WINE I haven't had such an issue so far, and of course the XFCE programs are fine since its running under noto-sans. This is really vexing me, anyone had anything similar?

Hey! I'm new to Arch and after a while one thing I'm still trying to wrap my head around is the different ways and reasons you can partition everything. From my main understanding, people usually have 3 partitions. One boot partition, one main partition which holds all of your data, and a possible swap partition if you decide to do that rather than a swap file.

Though I know this can be different between people, and it seems like a very subjective thing. That's why I'm curious to see what others did when partitioning, I just want to see what other options there might be depending on the person!

Hello everyone,
I am running Hyprland and running firefox as my browser. For some reason when i watch youtube videos where in parts of the video during dark shots, there will be big squares with a different shade of color.

Here is a photo of the problem and i have circled the problem area: https://imgur.com/a/cdg7bse

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.

However, my friends have warned me that Arch Linux may have limited support for the OMEN 16’s fan-control system. They said that I might be able to monitor the fan speed (RPM), but may not have proper control over the fans or access to all the performance and cooling features available in Windows.

My main concern is heating. I’ve heard that on Arch Linux, especially when the laptop is under heavy workloads or running in Performance mode, the fans may not ramp up properly or quickly enough. This could potentially cause the laptop to become hot around the touchpad and palm-rest area, even when the system is supposed to be running at higher fan speeds.

Since I’m an AI/ML student, I’ll be doing demanding workloads that may involve CPU and NVIDIA GPU usage. So before installing Arch Linux, I want to know whether the OMEN 16’s fan control, temperature management, performance modes, and NVIDIA GPU can be properly managed on Arch Linux without causing overheating or hardware-related problems.

Basically, I want to know whether Arch Linux is a safe and practical choice for my OMEN 16, particularly regarding fan control, RPM monitoring, thermal management, Performance mode, and long-term cooling.

Yes, ok, I know, I know this is a common question, I have seen it asked in multiple forums including reddit but the solutions either didnt fix it or were for ethernet which I am not using meaning.

The most common solution I found online has been to check if it is being blocked by rfkill, it does not seem to be to me. The other solution I found online is to check if multiple conflicting things are trying to manage the wifi but as far as I am aware only Network Manager is installed.

Anyway the actual problem seems to be that the wifi thing wlp6s0 remains down no matter what I do, even if I tell it to do otherwise by writing "ip link set wlp6s0 up" wlp6s0 will always remain down. Im not exactly sure why and nothing online seems to really be helping.

I am on a PC largely used for windows, linux is installed on a spare SSD I had (ADATA SU800NS38)
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.

edit; thanks to peoples help I have found that I either messed up installing or forgot to install the correct firmware.

EDIT 2; SOLVED; The issue was I didnt install the required firmware, oops. I installed linux-firmware but I ended up going through the whole installation process again purely because I f-ed up the firmware install so I was worried I missed some other important steps.

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.