[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenIndiana live USB image does not start LightDM or X

[Thom Holwerda]

Hi,


Thanks for the welcome!

This explains the problem quite a bit, and it seems like something that might need a writeup or a note somewhere, since I've heard from more people by now that they also experience this problem and had no idea what it meant. It seems like a very hard problem to solve for Illumos/OI/etc. developers, which really sucks for everyone involved.

Would it be possible to opt for a text install instead, get that up and running, and install/configure/etc. X from there? This might not work in my situation - I want it installed on a machine with an AMD Radeon Pro w5700, and you mention AMD being off-limits entirely - but it might be an option for others.


Thom



On 6 December 2025 15:16:17 CET, "Till Wegmüller" <toasterson at gmail.com> wrote:
>Hi Thom
>
>Lovely to have you here on the list. While we sort out your x86 installation. How is the SPARC journey going?
>
>The most likely issue is always some sort of mismatch between graphics card and Drivers in the ISO. Intel only works in really old cards otherwise will need the vesa boot option for Software rendering. AMD does not work. For NVIDIA you need the right graphics card and driver combination. We try to include the one that will work best with most cards according to current info available. But we had issues in the past where our driver is so special we can't exactly relly on that information.
>
>Anyway to get your installation working we usually have the following approach. First let's find a configuration we know has the best chance of working. That would be a x86 Workstation with NVIDIA graphics card. We know from the HCL a goos set that works without X https://illumos.org/hcl/
>
>Then we try to get something that is close to a 1080 in generation from Nvidia. Important. No Laptops with discrete graphics. This does not work with our gfx gate.
>
>Step 2 get the Workstation working without X and use it as pseudo server from a remote Terminal. That gets you productive with all the things then we can try to get X working and checking X11 logs to see what is failing with the card.
>
>People here have some known good configurations which can be aquired from ebay and other sources. With current Prices these machines are my prefered workhorses at the moment anyway.
>
>Hope that helps
>Till
>
>
>On 12/6/25 14:55, Thom Holwerda wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> 
>> Over the past year or so, I've tried several Hipster live USB images on a wide variety of computers, but they all fail in the exact same way: graphical-login/lightdm fails when trying to boot the live USB image. Intel, NVIDIA, AMD - it doesn't matter what type of machine I try.
>> 
>> ***
>> openindiana svc.startd[8]; application/graphical-login/lightdm: default failed: transitioned to maintenance (see 'svcs -xv' for details)
>> ***
>> 
>> The log always shows the same thing: failed to get list of logind seats, followed by something about the name org.freedesktop.login1 not being provided by any service files.
>> 
>> I've tried starting X directly, but that just fails with no screens found. This exact same error flow happens on old and new hardware, regardless of brand of CPU or GPU, and on all the past few Hipster images. I've made sure downloaded images have the correct checksum, followed the exact image writing instructions from the handbook, used different USB sticks - and none of it makes a difference.
>> 
>> Any help that could point me into any direction would be greatly appreciated!
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> 
>> Thom Holwerda
>> _______________________________________________
>> openindiana-discuss mailing list
>> openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org
>> https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
>
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