Install leading to blank screen

Anthias
1

Hey guys,

I’ve been attempting to set up an Anthias player at work for some digital signage - I’ve set up multiple before without a hitch, but I’m running in a new problem.

Every time I initiate the Anthias install, it will proceed as normal until the step titled “Run the Anthias Anisble Playbook” (probably not the exact wording), then it will simply blank. There will be a blinking cursor ( _ ; my linux vocab isn’t great, apologies) and it will hang indefinitely.

Some context:

  • I am flashing the SD card with the Raspberry Pi Imager.
  • I have tried with both Trixie and Debian versions of Raspberry Pi OS Lite.
  • I have tried with a Pi 3B and Pi 5 (including Trixie and Bookworm on both).
  • I have tried a 32gb SD and 64gb SD.
  • When the screen blanks, hitting Alt+F4 will bring me back to the login screen.
  • I am initiating the install with the command "bash <(curl -sL https://install-anthias.srly.io)

Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this? Or what the issue could be? I’m a bit of a Linux novice, so please forgive any obvious questions.

2

Hi, thanks for the detailed report and for listing everything you already tried.

The good news is that this is very likely not actually frozen. The installer runs an Ansible playbook, and Ansible prints the name of a step and then shows nothing at all until that step finishes. Two of the steps are big: a full system upgrade (apt dist-upgrade) and installing Docker plus pulling the container images. On a Pi 3B with a slower SD card or on WiFi, those can sit on a blinking cursor for 20 to 40 minutes with no visible activity, even though it is working the whole time. If you press Alt+F4 (which on Pi OS Lite just jumps you to another login screen) and then reboot or kill it, you are interrupting a healthy install.

Two things that will tell you for sure:

  1. Leave it running and give it a solid 30 to 45 minutes without touching it, especially on the Pi 3B.
  2. To watch it live, switch to a second console with Ctrl+Alt+F2, log in, and run top or journalctl -f. If you see apt, dpkg, python, or docker busy, or disk and network activity, it is progressing normally. Then switch back with Ctrl+Alt+F1.

A few things that make the install much smoother:

  • Use wired Ethernet for the install if you can. WiFi plus a large system upgrade is the slowest and flakiest combination.
  • A fresh, good quality SD card helps a lot. A worn or slow card is the most common reason downloads and unpacking crawl.

If you would rather skip the installer script entirely, the easiest path today is to flash the prebuilt Anthias image straight from Raspberry Pi Imager (under Choose OS, look for Anthias). That image already has everything set up, so there is no Ansible run to wait on.

If it truly is stuck (no CPU, disk, or network activity for 15+ minutes on that second console), could you tell us:

  • The exact task name printed on the line just above the blinking cursor.
  • Whether you are on Ethernet or WiFi.
  • Whether you answered yes or no to the “manage the network” prompt.

That will let us pin down where it stops. Thanks!