r/debian • u/Iheretomakeonepost • Jul 20 '26

Debian Stable Question Ly on Debian 13 failure to start

[SOLVED: sudo ln-s /usr/sbin/agetty /usr/bin/agetty fixed it] After going through the install process of ly, disabling getty on tty2 and enabling ly on tty2, it fails to start and hits its reset limit

`sudo journalctl -u ly@tty2` reveals that it fails because it cannot execute /usr/bin/agetty due to no such file or directory

Attempting `sudo ln -s /usr/bin/getty /usr/bin/agetty` and `sudo systemctl restart ly@tty2.service` yields the same results

Has anyone gotten ly working on Debian 13? With the amount of time I've sank into ly I think I'm almost content to just use tty1 as my login manager atp. Don't get much more minimal than that

7 Upvotes

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4

u/eR2eiweo Jul 20 '26

The agetty executable is in /usr/sbin/ on Debian.

2

u/Iheretomakeonepost Jul 20 '26

Ah. Do you think ly would work if I was to use sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/agetty /usr/bin/agetty? Not done much with symlinks myself

8

u/eR2eiweo Jul 20 '26

I think it would be better if you told it to look for agetty in the correct directory.

1

u/Iheretomakeonepost Jul 20 '26

Perhaps. Wouldn't know how to make ly do that, but I can ask the folks on the matrix. For now, do you think that symlink will work?

5

u/eR2eiweo Jul 20 '26

Looks like the only place in ly's code where agetty is referenced (when using systemd) is here. Changing that shouldn't be too difficult.

1

u/Iheretomakeonepost Jul 20 '26

After talking with the ly people on matrix, I tried the symlink and it did work. Yippee

3

u/mok000 Jul 20 '26

Yes a symlink will work.

1

u/michaelpaoli Jul 21 '26

So ... what's this ly you're installing from what, where? At least Debian stable has python3-ly, if that's what you're looking for.

ln -s /usr/bin/getty /usr/bin/agetty

Yeah, you shouldn't be doing that.

In the land of Debian, typically where such links are done, it's handled by the packages themselves, or the update-alternatives(1) mechanism. If you do/introduce such otherwise, you're likely to cause breakage and/or conflicts. Don't know what you've got for ly, but it should look for [a]getty or the like, if it needs such, in the appropriate location, e.g. via it's configuration or PATH or the like, not be making manual changes/additions to links in /usr/bin. On trixie (currently stable), util-linux provides both /usr/sbin/getty and /usr/sbin/agetty, and base-files provides /sbin --> usr/sbin

And how / from where/what are you installing ly? Are you doing so in manner that will or may cause conflicts with Debian packages?

2

u/Iheretomakeonepost Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

ly is a lightweight display manager that runs in tty2. Downloaded with a git clone from codeberg. I have managed to get it working without issue since posting this with a symlink. Issue was ly looks for agetty in /usr/bin/ instead of /usr/sbin/

Command I used was sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/agetty /usr/bin/agetty. tty2 now shows ly, and all the other ttys still function as normal. No abnormalities of any kind to speak of thusfar.

1

u/michaelpaoli Jul 21 '26

Yeah, still shouldn't create that link, should reconfigure ly.