(In reply to Fabian Vogt from comment #30) > While sddm using abort() to handle such critical errors isn't right, doing > it differently wouldn't fix the original issue. X still crashes. Ohnmm ... X does not crash ... that is the X server is up and shows its black background .. using the XUATHORITY variable with the sddm path I can start an xterm on the black screen. The sddm-helper seems not be allowed to open at least one of NVIDIA's devices below /dev ... what I expect is a valid error messages bfore doeing an abort().