---
title: Fixing my Desktop (again)
date: 2016-02-09
layout: Post
hero: https://source.unsplash.com/Kw_zQBAChws/1270x952
hero credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/Kw_zQBAChws
hero credit text: Ashim D'Silva
classes:
  header: header-black-gradient
tags:
  - linux
---
I successfully broke my computer again. Oops. I can watch systemd boot my system
and then once my display manager (in my case, sddm) takes over, kaput.
---

Once that's happened, I can't do anything else. I can't switch to a text console
because my displays switch themselves off, nor can I start a graphical session
because, again, my displays switch themselves off.

Rebooting yields this:

![Will this ever reboot?](/assets/2016-02-09-linux-on-the-desktop.9b0ec6532b5e.jpg)

(and clicking the reboot button does nothing)

I managed to fix this by booting into EFI shell, then specifying runlevel 3 by booting
the kernel's [EFISTUB](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFISTUB). My EFI shell didn't
like the leading slash for some reason. Whatever.

Once that was done, a `pacman -Syu` (which updated the `nvidia` package, among some other things)
and a `mkinitcpio -P linux` got me back up and running.

Simples!