Hi Felix, Thank you for your help.
On Friday 16 March 2018 17:02:17 Felix Miata wrote:
Baron composed on 2018-03-16 14:13 (UTC):
If I login with the root password, I get pages and pages of what I think maybe logs. At the end of this if I "StartX" I get my normal desktop. At this point if I logout and hard boot the machine, everything comes up as normal.
I haven't a clue what is going on here... Help !
Instead of startx, try
journalctl | grep failed
and see if it reports what failed.
If I run this now, will I get anything useful ?
As others suggested, the problem is a systemd race condition. Did this start after an update to the current initrd, or after a update that installed a new kernel? Do you have a boot menu that allows you to select to boot with an older kernel, which if selected behaves normally? If so, an initrd rebuild might make the problem go away.
If Q4OS is a Plymouth user, you might try disabling it by adding to cmdline
plymouth.enable=0
I did see something about "plymouth" when the pages of lines were flashing by.
With or without plymouth, if you remove "quiet" from the cmdline, you might be able as boot proceeds to spot the initial mention of the start job that is failing.