`llama stack list` only works after distro is run

[nathan-weinberg]

System Info

PyTorch version: 2.9.0+cpu
Is debug build: False
CUDA used to build PyTorch: None
ROCM used to build PyTorch: N/A

OS: Fedora Linux 41 (Workstation Edition) (x86_64)
GCC version: Could not collect
Clang version: Could not collect
CMake version: Could not collect
Libc version: glibc-2.40

Python version: 3.12.12 (main, Oct 10 2025, 00:00:00) [GCC 14.3.1 20250808 (Red Hat 14.3.1-3)] (64-bit runtime)
Python platform: Linux-6.16.7-100.fc41.x86_64-x86_64-with-glibc2.40
Is CUDA available: False
CUDA runtime version: No CUDA
CUDA_MODULE_LOADING set to: N/A
GPU models and configuration: No CUDA
Nvidia driver version: No CUDA
cuDNN version: No CUDA
Is XPU available: False
HIP runtime version: N/A
MIOpen runtime version: N/A
Is XNNPACK available: True

CPU:
Architecture:                            x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                          32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes:                           52 bits physical, 57 bits virtual
Byte Order:                              Little Endian
CPU(s):                                  24
On-line CPU(s) list:                     0-23
Vendor ID:                               GenuineIntel
Model name:                              Intel(R) Xeon(R) w5-3423
CPU family:                              6
Model:                                   143
Thread(s) per core:                      2
Core(s) per socket:                      12
Socket(s):                               1
Stepping:                                8
CPU(s) scaling MHz:                      33%
CPU max MHz:                             4200.0000
CPU min MHz:                             800.0000
BogoMIPS:                                4224.00
Flags:                                   fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid dca sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault epb cat_l3 cat_l2 cdp_l3 intel_ppin cdp_l2 ssbd mba ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid cqm rdt_a avx512f avx512dq rdseed adx smap avx512ifma clflushopt clwb intel_pt avx512cd sha_ni avx512bw avx512vl xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves cqm_llc cqm_occup_llc cqm_mbm_total cqm_mbm_local split_lock_detect user_shstk avx_vnni avx512_bf16 wbnoinvd dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_act_window hwp_epp hwp_pkg_req vnmi avx512vbmi umip pku ospke waitpkg avx512_vbmi2 gfni vaes vpclmulqdq avx512_vnni avx512_bitalg avx512_vpopcntdq la57 rdpid bus_lock_detect cldemote movdiri movdir64b enqcmd fsrm md_clear serialize tsxldtrk pconfig arch_lbr ibt amx_bf16 avx512_fp16 amx_tile amx_int8 flush_l1d arch_capabilities
Virtualization:                          VT-x
L1d cache:                               576 KiB (12 instances)
L1i cache:                               384 KiB (12 instances)
L2 cache:                                24 MiB (12 instances)
L3 cache:                                30 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA node(s):                            1
NUMA node0 CPU(s):                       0-23
Vulnerability Gather data sampling:      Not affected
Vulnerability Ghostwrite:                Not affected
Vulnerability Indirect target selection: Not affected
Vulnerability Itlb multihit:             Not affected
Vulnerability L1tf:                      Not affected
Vulnerability Mds:                       Not affected
Vulnerability Meltdown:                  Not affected
Vulnerability Mmio stale data:           Not affected
Vulnerability Old microcode:             Vulnerable
Vulnerability Reg file data sampling:    Not affected
Vulnerability Retbleed:                  Not affected
Vulnerability Spec rstack overflow:      Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass:         Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
Vulnerability Spectre v1:                Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2:                Mitigation; Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB conditional; PBRSB-eIBRS SW sequence; BHI BHI_DIS_S
Vulnerability Srbds:                     Not affected
Vulnerability Tsa:                       Not affected
Vulnerability Tsx async abort:           Not affected
Vulnerability Vmscape:                   Mitigation; IBPB before exit to userspace

Versions of relevant libraries:
[pip3] Could not collect
[conda] Could not collect

Information

• The official example scripts
• My own modified scripts

🐛 Describe the bug

llama stack list only shows the starter distro after you run it.

On a fresh install, it will show that no distros exist (see error logs)

After running the starter distro with llama stack run starter and then rerunning llama stack list it appears (see expected behavior)

Error logs

(llama-stack) [nathan@beanlab3 llama-stack (fix-vertex)]$ llama stack list                                                                              
No stacks found in ~/.llama/distributions

Expected behavior

(llama-stack) [nathan@beanlab3 llama-stack (fix-vertex)]$ llama stack list
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Stack Name ┃ Path                                      ┃ Build Config ┃ Run Config ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ starter    │ /home/nathan/.llama/distributions/starter │ No           │ No         │
└────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴────────────┘