New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

richt · 2025-11-14 21:34:24

I installed arch from USB (archlinux-2025.11.01-x86_64.iso) to a partition of my Thinkpad X1 Carbon and included a number of additional packages in the pacstrap command: base linux linux-firmware intel-ucode vim nano iwd dhcpcd man-db man-pages texinfo links sof-firmware grub efibootmgr os-prober

On boot, the notifications cycle indefinitely between Starting and Started D-Bus System Message Bus…

Some research suggested that problem might be conflicting services so I booted into USB live environment, arch-chrooted to my root partition and executed: ls -l /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/

Services listed are ModemManager, choose-mirror, hv_fcopy_daemon (this is in red), hv_kvp_daemon, hv_vss_daemon, iwd, livecd-talk, machines, pacman-init, remote-cryptsetup, remote-fs, remote-integritysetup, remote-veritysetup, sshd, systemd-homed, systemd-networkd, systemd-resolved, vboxservice, vmtoolsd, vmware-vmblock-fuse

Seemed like a lot of extraneous services (which might have resulted from including so many packages in my initial installation?) so I disabled all but iwd, machines.target, sshd, systemd-homed and systemd-resolved. But that didn't resolve my problem, as the boot is stuck cycling between Starting and Started D-Bus System Message Bus…

Thanks in advance for any recommendations!

jonno2002 · 2025-11-15 02:48:09

those services are enabled on the installation media, your obviously not chrooted correctly or you did somthing really wrong during installation process, id say since this is a new install just start fresh and follow the guide carefully

svenne_k · 2025-11-27 06:08:58

As a datapoint, I have the same problem with a newly installed (and newly purchased) machine.

Installed by hand (and by memory) from 2025.11.01 iso, not with archinstall:
- systemd-boot
- lvm2 on luks
- btrfs subvol (@) on / (and subvols for /home and /var)
- uki (never got to enroll private secure boot keys though)
- both sd-encrypt and encrypt based flows tried (which either /etc/crypttab.initramfs or cryptdevice= as needed)
- pacstrap packages: base base-devel linux linux-firmware lvm2 cryptsetup btrfs-progs iwd

The first (now wiped) install also failed in a new and interesting way, with "pcr machined" forcing reboot during boot (which I "fixed temporarily" by masking the service).

For context, I have installed tens if not hundreds of archlinuxes (physical hardware, vms etc) during the last decade or so, both by hand and various homemade scripts.

I have quickly run through the guide (for reference) and didn't see any material derivation on my part.

Install media boots fine and archinstall'ed version (tried after first install wiped) also runs fine (but cannot setup sane lvm2 setup). I will retry tonight and see if I can find the problem (but I never had this problem before, or the pcr problem).

seth · 2025-11-27 14:37:16

Can you boot the multi-user.target - in doubt along "nomodeset"?

lvm2 on luks

nb. that the mkinitcpio default changed from busybox to systemd which has different requirements here, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=310004

timop · 2026-01-01 11:03:43

I got this issue also. Older Thinkpad X1 yoga. (8th gen intel).

I highly suspect that SOF drivers might have something to do with it. 110% speculation based on last message being about audio (after bluetooth -16 failure). And despite all efforts and booted live-CDs I have not been able to find any configuration where internal speakers would work. I am dual-booting with linux mint and mint handles grub.

Going to figure out how to blacklist audio stuff at some point and see if it does the trick.

seth · 2026-01-01 16:20:57

If you know the pci vendor and product ID (eg via "lspci" on mint) you can hide the device by adding

pci-stub.ids=vendor:product

to the kernel parameters.
The speakers also don't work on mint?

timop · 2026-01-01 19:31:44

Could not figure a sensible way to blacklist audio stuff with reasonable effort. Just wiped the whole partition and reinstalled only the minimum modules. Only the couple ones mentioned in installation instructions for the minimum install and no SOF firmware etc this time. I installed nano with pacman after arch-chroot to make things bit easier during install but no other packages were installed.

Then I spotted that I forgot to update initramfs after changing keyboard layout from default setting last time I installed the system. So it might have done something also.

I was able to boot up the freezing system with debug kernel flag. Everything freezes as soon as D-Bus has been started and only the watchdog does something which causes D-Bus to restart (and there is short window when queued ctrl+alt+del causes the system to reboot) as soon as it starts, everything freezes again. Freezes means that ctrl+alt+del etc is not working and I tried to smash alt + f2 to open login prompt but no success. So I gave up and realised that reinstall would be probably the easiest way to go.

After the minimal installation and remembering to update initramfs the login prompt opened immediately after the 1:1 same bluetooth error. So the bluetooth nag can probably be fully excluded if someone wants to investigate further.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-11-14 21:34:24

New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

#2 2025-11-15 02:48:09

Re: New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

#3 2025-11-27 06:08:58

Re: New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

#4 2025-11-27 14:37:16

Re: New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

#5 2026-01-01 11:03:43

Re: New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

#6 2026-01-01 16:20:57

Re: New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

#7 2026-01-01 19:31:44

Re: New installation boot stuck: Starting/Started D-Bus System Message Bus

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