#1126991 plymouth: Plymouth hangs multi-user.target if no monitor connected

Package:
plymouth
Source:
plymouth
Description:
boot animation, logger and I/O multiplexer
Submitter:
Jim Garrison
Date:
2026-02-04 19:39:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1126991#5
Date:
2026-02-04 19:36:52 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

With no monitor connected, or the monitor powered off, plymouth-quit-wait.service hangs
at bootup.

The use case is a system that needs a graphical interface but spends most of
its time with the monitor powered off, and is managed mostly remotely
via ssh.

This is probably OK per se, but for some reason it prevents
multi-user.target from being reached as well.  Other systemd units
depending (After=) on multi-user.target then do not start.

I understand why graphical.target is stuck behind
plymouth-quit-wait.service, but it doesn't seem right that this also
hangs multi-user.target, which shouldn't depend on the graphical
interface.

As a workaround I have disabled plymouth in grub.