From: Christoph Liebender <christoph@liebender.dev>
Subject: Re: niri-25.11.20260220 crashes: "couldn't find GPU"
To: ports@openbsd.org
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2026 21:03:51 +0100

On 2/25/26 19:29, Tobias Heider wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 06:03:50PM +0000, David Goudou wrote:
>> niri package pulls in seatd, do you have it running and are you in the _seatd
>> group?
>>
>> As of 25.11.20260220, you shouldn't need to set render-drm-device
>>
>> On Wed, 25 Feb 2026, 17:42 Christoph Liebender, <[1]christoph@liebender.dev>
>> wrote:
>>
>>      Hi ports@, Tobias,
>>
>>      when trying to startniri.sh from vt0, it crashes for me with the
>>      attached error. (Specifying render-drm-device as it was suggested in the
>>      pkg-readme causes niri not to start at all, as I reported in the initial
>>      import thread already.)
>>
>>      I wonder, is there any other steps involved to get niri running? Do I
>>      need seatd, greetd, or anything like that? Or _should_ it just be a
>>      "raw" login to vt0 with startniri.sh? Because that's what I am trying.
>>
>>      - christoph
>>
>>
>> References:
>>
>> [1] mailto:christoph@liebender.dev
> 
> In my experience not starting seatd means your input won't work but
> I haven't previously seen any gpu detection errors. I guess your user
> has to have access to the devices in /dev/dri so maybe check the
> permissions.
> 
> The latest version of the port (25.11.20260220) has an updated rust
> drm crate and shouldn't require the render-drm-device hack anymore.
> 
> Does gpu acceleration work on your machine in other applications?
> Which GPU are you using?
> 

Thanks for the hints!! After some more trial and error, I got it 
working. In the end, seatd/greetd didn't do the trick for me, and 
apparently, it can work without anyway.

All I needed was to add this line to /etc/fbtab:

/dev/ttyC0 0600 
/dev/wskbd0:/dev/wsmouse[01]:/dev/dri/card0:/dev/dri/renderD128

for the correct permissions - I hope that this does not introduce any 
unwanted "security side-effects"? I can now startniri.sh on vt0. 
(wsmouse1 for thinkpad nipple control.)

I wonder though, what would be the greetd setup?

rcctl enable seatd greetd
usermod -G _seatd _greetd
usermod -G _seatd $(whoami)
sed -i 's|agreety --cmd /bin/sh|agreety --cmd startniri.sh|' \
	/etc/greetd/config.toml
reboot

... because that's what I did, and inputs would not work. Albeit without 
any changes to fbtab. So what's the point?

To answer your question Tobias, my GPU is an Intel UHD Graphics 620.