AnduinOS Live USB: Unexpected Login Screen

[Anduin2017]

If AnduinOS Live USB boots to a username/password prompt instead of the Live desktop, damaged or incorrectly written installation media is the cause. We have reproduced this symptom with a single-bit corruption in an ISO. It means your USB drive is physically faulty.

Please burn the image again with another USB stick with better quality. AnduinOS 2.0.4 will add automatic USB stick health check to show correct error message.

1. In our investigation, we found that a faulty USB stick with a single bit in a compressed block header will cause SquashFS to fail to decompress that block.
2. During Live environment setup, reading locale-gen failed with an Input/output error.
3. The initialization script uses set -e, so it exited immediately—before creating the Live user or configuring automatic login.
4. The GDM login manager still started normally, displaying a username prompt even though no usable Live account had been created.

To cross-check the USB from another working Linux system—you do not need to log into the broken Live session:

1. Plug in the USB and open its AnduinOS volume. Open a terminal in the folder containing md5sum.txt, then run:

   md5sum -c md5sum.txt

   All listed files should report OK. FAILED, missing files, or read errors mean the media has not passed verification. Check the written USB, not just the downloaded ISO.

2. Verify the downloaded ISO against its published SHA-256 checksum. If it does not match, download it again.

3. Rewrite the verified ISO using DD/raw-image mode (in Rufus, choose DD Image mode, not ISO mode). This erases the selected USB, so back it up and double-check the target drive first.

4. If verification still fails, try a different, reliable USB drive and another USB port, avoiding hubs.

If all checks pass but the login screen still appears, please report it: media corruption is not the only possible cause.