Light DM won't run after fresh install of Parrot on Raspberry Pi 5

Support Installation and Configuration
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Hello! I come to you all to report a recent issue that I’ve been having when attempting to run Parrot Security on my Raspberry Pi 5. Upon boot, it would fail to boot into the GUI. I am new to Linux and it’s way of operating, so the learning curve has been a bit steep for me. At first I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t get out of TTY into the GUI, and nothing online that I could find was of much help.

Recently, I decided to try my luck again after learning more about the inner workings of Linux distros, I would go back into TTY1 and it would report that the Light Display Manager would fail to launch. Naturally I tried updating the package, reinstalling lightdm, anything that could be of help that I could find, but unfortunately things were looking grim, until I stumbled upon a specific thread in the Raspberry Pi Forums.

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=358853

" If you’re trying to build up an X11 GUI-ful on Bookworm Lite, you may have already discovered that it doesn’t work, while the exact same disk popped into a Pi4 works as it always has, and the GUI comes up.

The error in /var/log/Xorg.0.log is: Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs

Simple fix: Install the package gldriver-test. This package adds two services that prepare the X11 graphics configuration for use on a Pi5. It appears that the rp1-test service is the important one. The second service (glamor-test) isn’t needed unless you’re using glamor (I’m not), but it appears to be harmless to leave it enabled."

Upon installation of the gldriver-test package and a reboot of the system, that seemed to fix the Issue with Light DM and its failure to launch. Now I have a working GUI for Parrot Security on my Pi, and I feel a bit better knowing that I’ve solved this with my newfound knowledge. Anyways, I’m posting this here as well so that in case anyone else in the same scenario as I can find a solution much easier and more quickly than I did, and also hopefully something that can get fixed in further updates.

I look forward to trying out everything Parrot has to offer now that it’s up and running!

  • Parrot Security 6.0 (Lorikeet) Raspberry Pi 5 8GB

  • Raspberry Pi Imager

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Hello traveler…

I downloaded the ParrotOS 6.0 Lorikeet Raspberry Pi Version Security Edition from here: https://www.parrotsec.org/download/ via the Normal Download option.

Next, I flashed it onto a 32 GB microSD card using the Pi Imager. I didn’t change any settings, just kept everything standard.

After that, I inserted it into a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and it worked fine, but when you insert the microSD into a Raspberry Pi 5, only the Console Edition will work.

So, I put it back into the Raspberry Pi 3B+ and connected to the internet. Then, I entered the following commands:

sudo raspi-config

Then, I set it to start only in console edition.

After rebooting, I entered:

sudo apt install gldriver-test
systemctl set-default graphical.target
sudo raspi-config

I set it back to boot into GUI mode.

After that, when I inserted the microSD back into the Pi 5, everything worked.

There are many ways to Rome, and this is the way that worked for me.