autostart application on raspberry pi 4 (systemd)

Question

I am working with raspberry pi os lite on raspberry pi 4.

I wanted to autostart a Qt application.

I created under /etc/systemd/system a .service file named application_one.service

this is what the .service file looks like

[Unit]
Description=Qt application autostart
After=graphical.target
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=pi
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/a
ExecStart=/home/pi/a/test_v1 -platform linuxfb

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

after that I enabled this service sudo systemctl enable application_one.service

but it couldn't autostart the apllication after rebooting

when I do sudo systemctl start application_one.service it works fine

these ares the status

sudo systemctl status application_one.service 
● application_one.service - Qt application autostart
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/application_one.service; enabled; vendor 
   Active: inactive (dead)

when booting I have 2 messages before splashscreen

[ 3.005162] systemd[1] : multi-user.target : Job application_one.service/start deleted to break ordering cycle starting with multi-user.target/start

[  3.005162] systemd[1] : multi-user.target : Job application_one.service/start 
lti-user.target/start

this is what my splashscreen.service looks like :

[Unit]
Description=Splash screen
DefaultDependencies=no
After=local-fs.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/fbi -d /dev/fb0 --noverbose -a /home/pi/image.png
StandardInput=tty
StandardOutput=tty

[Install]
WantedBy=sysinit.target

Can some please explain to me what I am doing wrong

thank you

Answer 1

You created a configuration which is impossible to resolve:

• application_one.service must start after graphical.target (G before A)
• graphical.target requires multi-user.target (M before G)
• multi-user.target wants to start application_one.service (A before M)

One way to break the loop would be swapping the order in which the units load. For instance you have now put After=multi-user.target and WantedBy=graphical.target in your unit file. Your service will start after multi-user.target, but only if graphical.target is about to load. If you want to make sure the GUI is ready when your app is about to load, you may actually want to specify e.g. After=lightdm.target instead of multi-user.