I did a "Normal" install on one of my laptops and when it finished, I could not log into it,

This is an Toshiba laptop, an Satelite L75D-A7283.  I have tried many installs over the past week and have not been successful with any of them.
As this will be integrated into my system, I am truly trying to set if up the same as my other computers.  They all have the drives set up as etc4s, with grub 2 and sddb as the root startup.  Now, when I set them up this way the installation goes on and comes back as installed.  But when I reboot it the users show up on the login screen but will simply not accept a password.  I don't get any reaction to the Enter key.

I did notice on my other machines (much newer by the way) that when I start an installation screen, the drives all have esp added after the boot flags.  Yet I can't find a way to execute any procedure to add it the the drive on this laptop.  Can anyone help me with this problem?

Can you boot the multi-user.target (2nd link below) or simpyl ctrl+alt+f3 and log in on the console?

If so, please post your complete system journal for the boot:

sudo journalctl -b | curl --upload-file - 'https://paste.c-net.org/'

*after* failing to login via SDDM.

Seth,
I am not able to send that file.  I keep getting a

curl :(6) Could not resolve host: paste.c-net.org

Is there another command I could use?
Bart

You first need to setup an internet connection, curl uploads the journal to c-net.org
You can eg. use https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Tethering or

sudo journalctl -b > /tmp/journal.txt

and then copy that file to a usb key and walk it to a system with functional network for upload.

well sir,

I could copy the file as you stated.  However, I can't get a usb key mounted in rw mode.

Bart

Why not? Do you have an error message?
Is the key vfat formatted?
Does either of

modinfo vfat
modinfo usb-storage

come back with an error?

No.  I didn't get an error message, until I looked at dmesg, which said the drive was mounted read only.
Yes.
No.

I used

journalctl -b > /mnt/tmp/file.txt

which wrote a file into the directory /mnt/tmp/ called file.txt
i placed a key into a drive spot on the machine and tried to copy it to the drive.
I used

cp /mnt/tmp/file.txt to /mnt/usb-disk/file.txt

to the usb key,  It didn't work.
So I tried to mount the drive, after looking it up using lsdisk, I tried

mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb-disk/

and got an error.
it said

mount /mnt/usb-disk: fsconfig() failed: /dev/sbd1/:  Can't lookup blockdev

So I tried to mount it with a -rw option flag, with a -o flag.  I read man pages, I read wiki pages, I can't figure this out.

Last edited by mt_arch_user (2026-04-29 13:57:12)

I'm aware of your age, the medical episode and your neighbor (pretty sure I made a comment about cookie-rewards in some previous thread )
You do not have to explain let alone apologize for anything, but I hope you're also telling to your wife what you said about here. Every day.

sudo mount -v /dev/sdb1 /mnt -o rw # assuming /dev/sdb1 is the usb key

Pursuing the network connection (we'll still need to get the journal out of that system "somehow"):
Since this is a notebook, is a rj45 cable connecting it to some consumer grade router?
If that is not an option, can you attach a smartphone (android or iOS) for the mentioned https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Tethering ?

Do you have

installed?
If the problem is that you didn't install any network configuration packages (dhcp client, iwd or wpa_supplicant or something like NetworkManager) you can fix that using the install iso - it will provide you with a network connection as during the installation and you can use that after arch-chroot'ing into the system.

No I don't.  Pacman says nothing when I ask.
Yes I do have a network connection to that machine.  I have a netgate router here and it is plugged into it.  The Arch iso asked me If I wanted a network connection and an I answered yes to a network connection manager.  But it didn't ever ask me to set it up.

I have never used chroot before.

Last edited by mt_arch_user (2026-04-29 14:23:57)

Does

sudo journalctl -b | curl -4 --upload-file - 'https://paste.c-net.org/'

work?
(This enforces IPv4)