GDM3 fails to start when using a system with both discrete NVIDIA and AMD GPUs,
and the proprietary NVIDIA drivers installed.
using below command
$ dbus-run-session -- gnome-shell --display-server --wayland
More Details
The issue occurs specifically with the proprietary NVIDIA drivers
(tested with both the standard and Tesla variants).
The problem is reproducible on both Debian Trixie and Sid, with all
relevant packages installed from the official Debian Sid repositories.
The problem is reproducible whether the NVIDIA drivers are installed
via the Debian packages or directly from the NVIDIA website.
GDM3 starts successfully when using Nouveau drivers, indicating the
issue is specific with the proprietary NVIDIA stack.
No such issue occurs on Rocky Linux 10 with the NVIDIA drivers from
the official NVIDIA website (gdm3 + Nvidia drivers + wayland).
The problem appears to be specific to Wayland sessions with GDM3; I
have not tested GDM3 under Xorg recently.
Logs
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Scheduled restart job,
restart counter is at 4.
░░ Automatic restarting of the unit gdm.service has been scheduled, as
the result for
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: Starting gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager...
░░ Subject: A start job for unit gdm.service has begun execution
░░ A start job for unit gdm.service has begun execution.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: Started gdm.service - GNOME Display Manager.
░░ Subject: A start job for unit gdm.service has finished successfully
░░ A start job for unit gdm.service has finished successfully.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz gdm-launch-environment][2454]:
pam_unix(gdm-launch-environment:session): session opened for user
Debian-gdm(uid=105) by (uid=0)
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd-logind[1363]: New session c10 of user Debian-gdm.
░░ Subject: A new session c10 has been created for user Debian-gdm
░░ A new session with the ID c10 has been created for the user Debian-gdm.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: Started session-c10.scope - Session
c10 of User Debian-gdm.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz gdm3[2449]: Gdm: GdmSession: no session desktop
files installed, aborting...
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz kernel: traps: gdm3[2449] trap int3
ip:7f2eb787025a sp:7ffd9a506a30 error:0 in
libglib-2.0.so.0.8400.3[6725a,7f2eb7828000+a1000]
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Main process exited,
code=killed, status=5/TRAP
░░ An ExecStart= process belonging to unit gdm.service has exited.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
░░ The unit gdm.service has entered the 'failed' state with result 'signal'.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Triggering OnFailure= dependencies.
Jul 15 00:06:53 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Failed to enqueue
OnFailure=plymouth-quit.service job, ignoring: Unit
plymouth-quit.service not found.
Jul 15 00:06:54 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Scheduled restart job,
restart counter is at 5.
░░ Automatic restarting of the unit gdm.service has been scheduled, as
the result for
Jul 15 00:06:54 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jul 15 00:06:54 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Failed with result 'signal'.
░░ The unit xyz.service has entered the 'failed' state with result 'signal'.
Jul 15 00:06:54 xyz systemd[1]: Failed to start gdm.service - GNOME
Display Manager.
░░ Subject: A start job for unit gdm.service has failed
░░ A start job for unit gdm.service has finished with a failure.
Jul 15 00:06:54 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Triggering OnFailure= dependencies.
Jul 15 00:06:54 xyz systemd[1]: gdm.service: Failed to enqueue
OnFailure=plymouth-quit.service job, ignoring: Unit
plymouth-quit.service not found.
# ls -al /usr/share/wayland-sessions/
total 20
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 68 Jul 15 00:07 .
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 3892 Jul 14 22:58 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 7976 Jul 15 00:06 gnome.desktop
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 8402 Apr 17 11:41 gnome-wayland.desktop
# lsmod | grep nvidia
nvidia_drm 118784 3
nvidia_modeset 1605632 3 nvidia_drm
nvidia 60702720 35 nvidia_modeset
drm_ttm_helper 16384 3 amdgpu,nvidia_drm
drm_kms_helper 253952 4
drm_display_helper,amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper,nvidia_drm
video 81920 3 asus_wmi,amdgpu,nvidia_modeset
drm 774144 24
gpu_sched,drm_kms_helper,drm_exec,drm_suballoc_helper,drm_display_helper,nvidia,drm_buddy,amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper,nvidia_drm,ttm,amdxcp
# lsmod | grep amd
amdgpu 14450688 22
amd_atl 57344 1
edac_mce_amd 28672 0
amdxcp 12288 1 amdgpu
kvm_amd 217088 5
drm_exec 12288 1 amdgpu
gpu_sched 65536 1 amdgpu
drm_buddy 20480 1 amdgpu
drm_suballoc_helper 12288 1 amdgpu
kvm 1396736 4 kvm_amd
drm_display_helper 274432 1 amdgpu
drm_ttm_helper 16384 3 amdgpu,nvidia_drm
ttm 106496 2 amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper
drm_kms_helper 253952 4
drm_display_helper,amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper,nvidia_drm
i2c_algo_bit 16384 1 amdgpu
ccp 163840 1 kvm_amd
video 81920 3 asus_wmi,amdgpu,nvidia_modeset
crc16 12288 2 bluetooth,amdgpu
drm 774144 24
gpu_sched,drm_kms_helper,drm_exec,drm_suballoc_helper,drm_display_helper,nvidia,drm_buddy,amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper,nvidia_drm,ttm,amdxcp
lscpi output
AMD RX 6400 - 4 GB VRAM
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
[AMD/ATI] Navi 24 [Radeon RX 6400/6500 XT/6500M] (rev c7)
05:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi
21/23 HDMI/DP Audio Controller
Nvidia RTX 3080 - 10 GB VRAM
0b:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GA102 [GeForce
RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate] (rev a1)
0b:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GA102 High Definition Audio
Controller (rev a1)
hwinfo
System Product Name (SKU)
TUF GAMING X570-PRO (WI-FI)
64KiB BIOS
128GiB System Memory
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor
System Information:
Debian Release: 13.0
APT prefers testing-security
APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 6.12.37+deb13-amd64 (SMP w/32 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE,
TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: SELinux: enabled - Mode: Permissive - Policy name: default
Versions of packages gdm3 depends on:
ii accountsservice 23.13.9-7
ii adduser 3.152
ii dbus [default-dbus-system-bus] 1.16.2-2
ii dbus-bin 1.16.2-2
ii dbus-daemon 1.16.2-2
ii dconf-cli 0.40.0-5
ii dconf-gsettings-backend 0.40.0-5
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.91
ii gir1.2-gdm-1.0 48.0-2
ii gnome-session [x-session-manager] 48.0-1
ii gnome-session-bin 48.0-1
ii gnome-session-common 48.0-1
ii gnome-settings-daemon 48.1-1
ii gnome-shell 48.3-1
ii gnome-terminal [x-terminal-emulator] 3.56.2-1
ii gsettings-desktop-schemas 48.0-1
ii libaccountsservice0 23.13.9-7
ii libaudit1 1:4.0.5-1
ii libc6 2.41-9
ii libgdk-pixbuf-2.0-0 2.42.12+dfsg-4
ii libgdm1 48.0-2
ii libglib2.0-0t64 2.84.3-1
ii libglib2.0-bin 2.84.3-1
ii libgtk-3-0t64 3.24.49-3
ii libgudev-1.0-0 238-6
ii libjson-glib-1.0-0 1.10.6+ds-2
ii libkeyutils1 1.6.3-6
ii libpam-modules 1.7.0-5
ii libpam-runtime 1.7.0-5
ii libpam-systemd [logind] 257.7-1
ii libpam0g 1.7.0-5
ii librsvg2-common 2.60.0+dfsg-1
ii libselinux1 3.8.1-1
ii libsystemd0 257.7-1
ii libx11-6 2:1.8.12-1
ii libxau6 1:1.0.11-1
ii libxcb1 1.17.0-2+b1
ii libxdmcp6 1:1.1.5-1
ii polkitd 126-2
ii procps 2:4.0.4-8
ii systemd-sysv 257.7-1
ii ucf 3.0052
ii x11-common 1:7.7+24
ii x11-xserver-utils 7.7+11
ii xfwm4 [x-window-manager] 4.20.0-1
Versions of packages gdm3 recommends:
ii at-spi2-core 2.56.2-1
ii desktop-base 13.0.3
ii gnome-session [x-session-manager] 48.0-1
ii x11-xkb-utils 7.7+9
ii xserver-xephyr 2:21.1.16-1.3
ii xserver-xorg 1:7.7+24
ii zenity 4.1.90-1
Versions of packages gdm3 suggests:
pn libpam-fprintd <none>
ii libpam-gnome-keyring 48.0-1
pn libpam-pkcs11 <none>
pn libpam-sss <none>
pn orca <none>
Linux xyz 6.12.37+deb13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.37-1
(2025-07-11) x86_64 GNU/Linux