Page Not Found - local install of Hugo on Linux Mint

support
1

Hi,

Sorry for asking basic questions here.

I am trying to set up Hugo on my laptop, which is running Linux Mint.

I have installed Hugo from Github - this version: hugo_0.159.2_linux-amd64.deb

From the Terminal on Mint, I ran hugo version and got this response:

hugo v0.159.2-5f4646acaad89e1166aac118e118b0d28013f460 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-04-01T12:59:20Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

I attempted to follow the Quick Start instructions, which were to run these commands:

hugo new project quickstart
cd quickstart
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke.git themes/ananke
echo "theme = 'ananke'" >> hugo.toml
hugo server

I did that okay, and up until the hugo server step all worked okay - response:

Congratulations! Your new Hugo project was created in /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart.

Just a few more steps…

Change the current directory to /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart.

Create or install a theme:

Create a new theme with the command “hugo new theme ”

Or, install a theme from https://themes.gohugo.io/

Edit hugo.toml, setting the “theme” property to the theme name.

Create new content with the command “hugo new content /.”.

Start the embedded web server with the command “hugo server --buildDrafts”.

See documentation at https://gohugo.io/.
hint: Using ‘master’ as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint:
hint: 	git config --global init.defaultBranch 
hint:
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of ‘master’ are ‘main’, ‘trunk’ and
hint: ‘development’. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint:
hint: 	git branch -m 
Initialised empty Git repository in /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/.git/
Cloning into ‘/home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke’…
remote: Enumerating objects: 4262, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (113/113), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (71/71), done.
remote: Total 4262 (delta 88), reused 42 (delta 42), pack-reused 4149 (from 3)
Receiving objects: 100% (4262/4262), 6.29 MiB | 12.86 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (2060/2060), done.

When I run hugo server this is the response:

Watching for changes in /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/archetypes, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/assets, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/content, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/data, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/i18n, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/layouts, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/static, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/archetypes, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/assets/ananke, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/i18n, ... and 3 more
Watching for config changes in /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/hugo.toml, /home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/config/_default
Start building sites … 
hugo v0.159.2-5f4646acaad89e1166aac118e118b0d28013f460 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-04-01T12:59:20Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

Built in 1 ms
ERROR error building site: render: [en v1.0.0 guest] failed to render pages: render of "/404" failed: "/home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/layouts/baseof.html:26:15": execute of template failed: template: 404.html:26:15: executing "404.html" at <partials.Include>: error calling Include: "/home/xvd/www/hugo/quickstart/themes/ananke/layouts/_partials/site-style.html:2:32": execute of template failed: template: _partials/site-style.html:2:32: executing "_partials/site-style.html" at <.RelPermalink>: error calling RelPermalink: TOCSS: failed to transform "/ananke/css/main.css" (text/css). Check your Hugo installation; you need the extended version to build SCSS/SASS with transpiler set to 'libsass'.: this feature is not available in your current Hugo version, see https://goo.gl/YMrWcn for more information

I’m not sure why this would be the case when I’m using a brand new installation of Hugo and I’m following the official Hugo Quick start steps?

I also followed the steps from this site: Building a blog with Hugo

Step 1: hugo new site hugo01

Response:

Congratulations! Your new Hugo project was created in /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01.

Just a few more steps…

1. Change the current directory to /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01.
2. Create or install a theme:
   - Create a new theme with the command “hugo new theme ”
   - Or, install a theme from https://themes.gohugo.io/
3. Edit hugo.toml, setting the “theme” property to the theme name.
4. Create new content with the command “hugo new content /.”.
5. Start the embedded web server with the command “hugo server --buildDrafts”.

See documentation at https://gohugo.io/.

Step 2 - run these commands:

cd essgeelabs.net
git init
git submodule add --depth=1 https://github.com/vimux/mainroad.git themes/mainroad

Response:

bash: cd: ``essgeelabs.net``: No such file or directory
hint: Using ‘master’ as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint:
hint: git config --global init.defaultBranch
hint:
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of ‘master’ are ‘main’, ‘trunk’ and
hint: ‘development’. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint:
hint: git branch -m
Initialised empty Git repository in /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/.git/
Cloning into ‘/home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/themes/mainroad’…
remote: Enumerating objects: 125, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (125/125), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (114/114), done.
remote: Total 125 (delta 18), reused 30 (delta 1), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (125/125), 229.67 KiB | 3.15 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (18/18), done.

Step 3 - echo 'theme = "mainroad"' >> .\config.toml

Step 4 - hugo new posts/first-post.md

Response:

Content “/home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/content/posts/first-post.md” created

Step 5 - edit first-post.md

After update, page contains:

+++
date = ‘2026-04-03T15:02:34+01:00’
draft = true
title = ‘First Post’
+++
I’m using Hugo to build my new website. Hugo is awesome.

Step 5 - start internal server - hugo server -D

Response:

Watching for changes in /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/archetypes, /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/assets, /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/content/posts, /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/data, /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/i18n, /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/layouts, /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/static
Watching for config changes in /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/hugo.toml
Start building sites … 
hugo v0.159.2-5f4646acaad89e1166aac118e118b0d28013f460 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-04-01T12:59:20Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "section": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "home": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "taxonomy": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "page": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.

                  │ EN 
──────────────────┼────
 Pages            │  5 
 Paginator pages  │  0 
 Non-page files   │  0 
 Static files     │  0 
 Processed images │  0 
 Aliases          │  0 
 Cleaned          │  0 

Built in 3 ms
Environment: "development"
Serving pages from disk
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1) 
Press Ctrl+C to stop

Step 6 - open localhost http://localhost:1313/

Response: Page Not Found

If I put in a test .txt page called test.txt in /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/contentthen I can see its contents here:http://localhost:1313/test.txt

It’s not that nothing works at all, but something seems to be not working.

Sorry for the essay. Any advice much appreciated.

Thanks

2

The error is related to Hugo deprecating Libsass in favour of Dart Sass for transpiling SASS to CSS, and the theme being behind on those changes. @davidsneighbour you have an error here to resolve.

Related: Issue · GitHub

In the meantime, if you need a working Hugo skeleton, do this

  1. With a theme skeleton
hugo new site quickstart
cd quickstart
hugo new theme quick
echo 'theme = "quick"' >> hugo.toml
hugo server
  1. Without a theme
hugo new theme quickstart --themesDir .
cd quickstart
hugo server

Alternatively, use a different theme compatible with your current Hugo version.

3

No, it is not.

From the quick start guide…

image
image575×147 9.23 KB

It requires the extended or extended/deploy edition, v0.156.0 or later… as shown above.

4

Didn’t know that. I get the same error with every theme that I have tested requiring SASS. I installed the standard edition when webp was baked in. TBH, I didn’t think of looking at quickstart changes, and the last time I checked the discussion was on deprecating the extended edition.

5

that one sounds like you should have changed to hugo01.

6

Thanks for your reply.

Sorry - that was a mistake on my part re. my question - these are the steps I’m following from this page:

Step 1

Install new site - success

xvd@xvd:~/www$ hugo new site hugo01
Congratulations! Your new Hugo project was created in /home/xvd/www/hugo01.

Just a few more steps...

1. Change the current directory to /home/xvd/www/hugo01.
2. Create or install a theme:
   - Create a new theme with the command "hugo new theme <THEMENAME>"
   - Or, install a theme from https://themes.gohugo.io/
3. Edit hugo.toml, setting the "theme" property to the theme name.
4. Create new content with the command "hugo new content <SECTIONNAME>/<FILENAME>.<FORMAT>".
5. Start the embedded web server with the command "hugo server --buildDrafts".

See documentation at https://gohugo.io/.

Step 2

Change directory to the folder created with new site’s name.

Use Git to download the theme after first initialising Git.

Success

xvd@xvd:~/www$ cd hugo01
git init
git submodule add --depth=1 https://github.com/vimux/mainroad.git themes/mainroad
hint: Using 'master' as the name for the initial branch. This default branch name
hint: is subject to change. To configure the initial branch name to use in all
hint: of your new repositories, which will suppress this warning, call:
hint: 
hint: 	git config --global init.defaultBranch <name>
hint: 
hint: Names commonly chosen instead of 'master' are 'main', 'trunk' and
hint: 'development'. The just-created branch can be renamed via this command:
hint: 
hint: 	git branch -m <name>
Initialised empty Git repository in /home/xvd/www/hugo01/.git/
Cloning into '/home/xvd/www/hugo01/themes/mainroad'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 125, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (125/125), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (114/114), done.
remote: Total 125 (delta 18), reused 30 (delta 1), pack-reused 0 (from 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (125/125), 229.67 KiB | 3.83 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (18/18), done.

Step 3

Add theme = "mainroad" to the config.toml file - success.

echo 'theme = "mainroad"' >> .\config.toml

Step 4

Add some content - success:

xvd@xvd:~/www/hugo01$ hugo new posts/first-post.md
Content “/home/xvd/www/hugo01/content/posts/first-post.md” created

Step 5

Edit first-post.mdand save changes - success

Edited page:

+++
date = ‘2026-04-04T07:13:45+01:00’
draft = true
title = ‘First Post’
+++

This is a test

Step 6

Hugo has an internal web server that you can use to view the config. At the command-line type:

hugo server -D

The -D means to also show drafts.

Failure - this is the response:

Watching for changes in /home/xvd/www/hugo01/archetypes, /home/xvd/www/hugo01/assets, /home/xvd/www/hugo01/content/posts, /home/xvd/www/hugo01/data, /home/xvd/www/hugo01/i18n, /home/xvd/www/hugo01/layouts, /home/xvd/www/hugo01/static
Watching for config changes in /home/xvd/www/hugo01/hugo.toml
Start building sites …
hugo v0.159.2-5f4646acaad89e1166aac118e118b0d28013f460 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-04-01T12:59:20Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

WARN  found no layout file for “html” for kind “home”: You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for “html” for kind “section”: You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for “html” for kind “taxonomy”: You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for “html” for kind “page”: You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.

              │ EN 

──────────────────┼────
Pages            │  5
Paginator pages  │  0
Non-page files   │  0
Static files     │  0
Processed images │  0
Aliases          │  0
Cleaned          │  0

Built in 3 ms
Environment: “development”
Serving pages from disk
Running in Fast Render Mode. For full rebuilds on change: hugo server --disableFastRender
Web Server is available at http://localhost:1313/ (bind address 127.0.0.1)
Press Ctrl+C to stop

By failure - I mean that nothing appears when going to localhost:1313 other than getting “Page Not Found” appear on the page.

Though like I said yesterday, if I put in a test .txt page called test.txt in /home/xvd/www/hugo/hugo01/contentthen I can see its contents here:http://localhost:1313/test.txt

It’s not that nothing works at all, but something seems to be not working.

This is what I see when running hugo --logLevel debug:

Start building sites … 
hugo v0.159.2-5f4646acaad89e1166aac118e118b0d28013f460 linux/amd64 BuildDate=2026-04-01T12:59:20Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

INFO  build:  step process substep collect files 1 files_total 1INFO  static: syncing static files to / duration 122.728µs
 pagesources_total 1 resourcesources_total 0 duration 107.986µs
INFO  build:  step process duration 181.04µs
INFO  build:  step assemble duration 742.56µs
WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "section": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "taxonomy": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
WARN  found no layout file for "html" for kind "home": You should create a template file which matches Hugo Layouts Lookup Rules for this combination.
INFO  build:  step render substep pages site en outputFormat html duration 588.018µs
INFO  build:  step render substep pages site en outputFormat rss duration 601.894µs
INFO  build:  step render pages 5 content 0 duration 1.291392ms
INFO  build:  step render deferred count 0 duration 1.353µs
INFO  build:  step postProcess duration 20.852µs
INFO  build:  duration 2.382418ms

                  │ EN 
──────────────────┼────
 Pages            │  5 
 Paginator pages  │  0 
 Non-page files   │  0 
 Static files     │  0 
 Processed images │  0 
 Aliases          │  0 
 Cleaned          │  0 

Total in 10 ms

I am not sure where I’m going wrong.

A zipped file containing the code from my /home/xvd/www/hugo01folder is here:

https://github.com/elasticfrog/hugo01/archive/refs/heads/main.zip

I am using a laptop running Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit in case you need to know.

Thanks

7

no theme there: add theme = "mainroad" and mind the letter case

gc hugo01-main\hugo01.\hugo.toml
baseURL = 'https://example.org/'
locale = 'en-us'
title = 'My New Hugo Project'