AnyDesk now starts immediately

August 21, 2025 — BarryK

Ah, I fondly recall Easy Scarthgap, packages compiled by me in OpenEmbedded/Yocto, without dependency on polkit, pam, systemd or elogind. Unfortunately, using Devuan/Debian packages, have to attempt to render these inoperative. Which is not easy. Yes, Devuan does not use systemd, but it does require elogind, which is a component of systemd.

I have posted a couple of times about AnyDesk being slow to start. Most recent post:

AnyDesk works but slow startup — August 19, 2025

The solution, we found, to achieve immediate startup, is to delete this file:

/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.login1.service

This file is in the 'elogind' package, so I have added to builtin/deb/fixes/elogind/FIXUPHACK in woofQ2:

#20250720 don't want the daemon to run
chmod 644 etc/init.d/elogind

##20250721
#mv -f usr/lib/udev/rules.d/73-seat-late.rules usr/lib/udev/rules.d/73-seat-late.rulesHIDE

#20250821
#this causes delay start of anydesk (unable to activate then timeout)...
rm -f usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/org.freedesktop.login1.service

OK, but why does APT install 'elogind'? Debian has broken the original elogind package into 4 or 5 smaller .deb packages, as is their usual practice. The elogind .deb has the daemon plus several support files. I did a reverse-dependency check, to find out what package is requiring elogind:

# apt-cache rdepends elogind
elogind
Reverse Depends:
  runit-services
  elogind-dbgsym
  plymouth
 |mate-power-manager
  libpam-elogind
 |debian-podman-config-override
# 
# apt-cache rdepends libpam-elogind
libpam-elogind
Reverse Depends:
  libpam-elogind-dbgsym
  elogind
#

...er, that is a dependency-loop, no other package needs them; they only need each other. And yes, APT has also installed 'libpam-elogind'. Hmmm.

OK, I'm going to block both of those, 'elogind' and 'libpam-elogind', from installing, by creating "equivs" packages of them.

EDIT:
Ah, I see. libpam-elogind has alternative names that it provides:

# apt info libpam-elogind
Package: libpam-elogind
Version: 255.17-2
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Source: elogind
Origin: Devuan
Maintainer: Mark Hindley <mark@hindley.org.uk>
Installed-Size: 596 kB
Provides: default-logind, libpam-systemd, logind
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.39), libcap2 (>= 1:2.10), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), elogind (= 255.17-2), libelogind-compat, libpam-runtime
Conflicts: libpam-ck-connector
Breaks: libpam-systemd
Replaces: libpam-systemd
Homepage: https://github.com/elogind/elogind
Download-Size: 220 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://pkgmaster.devuan.org/merged excalibur/main amd64 Packages
Description: elogind PAM module
 Plugable Authentication Module to register a session with elogind

... the important one is 'default-logind', that is a dependency of a few packages, such as 'network-manager'. So that is why APT has installed them. Anyway, I have created equivs packages for elogind and libpam-elogind.

Tags: easy