On Pi 4 sshd does not start when no display device is created

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#4,786 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
linux

Research direction

No source file or test is named. Reproduce the boot with no display device, then inspect the sshd startup path and system logs to determine why display creation affects service startup. Done means sshd starts reliably after enabling it, regardless of whether a monitor is connected.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Describe the bug
sshd is not started when no display device is created

To reproduce

  • Start with a fresh image of Raspian OS with Desktop
  • Enable sshd
  • Reboot with no monitors plugged into either hdmi port
  • Note failed attempts to ssh into the Pi
  • Reboot with monitor/keyboard plugged in
  • Edit /boot/config.txt and uncomment hdmi_force_hotplug=1 to force creation of a display device
  • Reboot with monitor unplugged
  • Note successful attempts to ssh into the Pi

Expected behaviour
Once sshd is enabled it should start regardless of the state of existence of any display device.

Actual behaviour
Once sshd is enabled it does not start if there is no display device created.

System

  • Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.2
  • Raspberry Pi reference 2020-05-27 Generated using pi-gen, https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen, 825107f04027269db77426046f5085475b1ea22f, stage2
  • Dec 1 2021 15:01:54 Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom version 71bd3109023a0c8575585ba87cbb374d2eeb038f (clean) (release) (start)
  • Linux pi-ctlr 5.10.63-v7l+ #1496 SMP Wed Dec 1 15:58:56 GMT 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux

Logs
Specify what log data is needed, and I will post it.

Additional context
None at this time.

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