On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 8:24 AM, InvalidPath <invalid.path@gmail.com> wrote:


On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 12:24 AM, Ed Greshko <ed.greshko@greshko.com> wrote:
On 01/26/18 15:01, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 01/25/2018 07:54 PM, InvalidPath wrote:
>>
>>
>> Ok so tonight I tried enabling, and I had to manually rm or mv the existing
>> display-manager.service file because enabling another DE would not overwrite it. I
>> tried both SDDM and LightDM... neither of which would boot correctly, all  got was
>> a black screen with no mouse. Alt+F# would not work either. So I'm thinking she
>> locked up tight as a drum.
>
> First you disable the old DM, then enable the new one.

systemctl -f enable sddm

does what is needed.  The "key" is the -f which means "force"

       -f, --force
           When used with enable, overwrite any existing conflicting symlinks.


FWIW, I had already given this command to the OP in a different thread.


--
A motto of mine is: When in doubt, try it out


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@Ed I know /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service is a symlink, I use zsh so I saw the light blue flashing text in my terminal ;)

And neither works meaning, I tried replacing this symlink with one pointing to /usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service
 because the command you gave me would not overwrite the symlink.. and I even ran it as root but it still refused. No clue why really but honestly I didnt care enough to find out. So I manually created a new symlink to teh sddm file.  Then later on I created one (overwriting the default) to the LightDM service file.  All to no avail.

And by boot correctly in last nights escapades I mean that this time... I did not even get a mouse cursor... just black. 
And I did remove the Gnome bits but this time I did it individually after 'sudo --exclude='qemu* libvirt*' remove gnome-<package-name>' which after many of these the GDM was removed, I ended up reinstalling GDM* which in turn reinstalled every BLASTED thing that I had just removed beforehand.  So frustrating.

I did check the contents of /var/lib/sddm/state.conf and it references gnome-desktop of all things!  Why is it so bloody hard to change the Display Managers up in here??

@Joe So are you meaning that I should mask or delete the symlink to my current DM, maybe reboot then create one for teh other.. like SDDM or LightDM?


So tonight, I guess I should try again.. maybe remove and reinstall sddm and I'd firstly think that installing a few other DM's would be a good idea but then I'm left with so many other dependencies that I'd be in the same boat as now. So am I correct in thinking that reinstalling sddm, I will retry the enable command and see if the results are different this time.. and if greeted with a black screen then journalctl should be my friend.. Oh and also check that state.conf file to make sure it's not still pointing to GDM... Is this a solid plan?