Documentation › Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

Black screens, a desktop that doesn't start, missing sound or Wi-Fi, logs, System Health and resetting settings

#System Health first

Settings → System Health checks disks (SMART), free space, updates, firmware, failed services, the battery, graphics drivers and the session's own startup, and shows a fix for each problem. Guided Diagnostics prepares a local report for installation, startup and login, or app problems: raw logs are left out unless you choose to include them, you can edit the preview, and nothing is uploaded.

#The screen stays black after the boot menu

1. Start Try Aurora OS (safe graphics).
2. Still black: edit the entry with E and add nomodeset to the line that starts with linux.
3. On an installed NVIDIA system: Settings → Software Updates → Additional Drivers.

#The desktop doesn't appear after login

• At the login screen choose Aurora Compatibility.
• If the Aurora session fell back to labwc, the reason is in ~/.local/state/aurora/compositor-failure.log and in System Health.
• If the top bar or dock disappear, the shell restarts by itself within a second (up to five times a minute). Its log is $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/aurora-shell.log.
• To log in without the desktop: Ctrl+Alt+F2 gives a text console.

#An app doesn't respond

Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), select it, End Task; if it stays, Kill. From a terminal: pkill NAME or kill -9 PID.

#No sound

• Control Center → the arrow next to the volume: choose the right output device.
• Settings → Sound → Volume Mixer: is the app muted or very low?
• systemctl --user restart pipewire wireplumber restarts the sound system.

#No Wi-Fi

• Airplane Mode off? Wi-Fi tile on?
• nmcli radio shows whether Wi-Fi is blocked; rfkill list shows a hardware switch.
• Some Broadcom and Realtek cards need a newer kernel: sudo apt install -t trixie-backports linux-image-amd64.

#An update broke something

Start the snapshot from before the update from the boot menu: see Snapshots and recovery.

#Reset settings

gsettings reset-recursively org.aurora.desktop    # Aurora's desktop settings
rm ~/.config/labwc/rc.xml                         # keyboard shortcuts and window settings
aurora-wayfire-config                             # regenerate the Aurora session's config

Log out and in again afterwards. Your files are not touched.

#Logs