On Monday, 25 December 2017 10:07:11 GMT Jörg Schaible wrote:
> Hi Raymond,
> 
> Am Sat, 23 Dec 2017 22:59:32 -0800 schrieb Raymond Jennings:
> > That sounds like a possible issue with your X configuration.
> > 
> > Did you double check /etc/conf.d/xdm and the like to make sure that your
> > VT is indeed set to 7.
> 
> Content of /etc/conf.d/xdm
> ======= %< ==============
> CHECKVT=7
> DISPLAYMANAGER="sddm"
> rc_use="mysql"
> ======= %< ==============
> 
> > Also double check your display manager configuration.
> > 
> > If your manual VT switch works fine I'd suspect a misbehaving display
> > manager possibly being confused by bad configuration
> 
> Then, why does it work seamlessly when I boot with the old 4.12.12 kernel?
> 
> Since I have this behavior with two desktop machines, I thought others might
> haven been affected as well ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Jörg

This won't help, but:

sddm has been broken on 3 different PCs here with Intel and AMD CPUs, on 
different MoBos, for months.  As far as I recall it always launched the 
desktop, but would not logout on the first attempt.  It also broke udisks 
because I could no longer mount storage devices using the GUI.  I've posted a 
bug, but nothing came of it other than the recommendation to try later 
versions - all of them borked.  On my own laptop I've moved to lightdm.

-- 
Regards,
Mick