Precise: Very slow boot / Unity 3d does not start on some USB drives

[Rüdiger Kupper]

Strange as it is, I have two sorts of USB thumb drives here:
1) 4GB thumb drive, brand "Paradies" (from German drug store "Drogerie dm")
2) 8GB thumb drive, brnd "Müller" (from German drug store "Drogerie Müller")

Trying to install Ubuntu 12.04.1 64-bit live on both of them yields the following (both running on the same Thinkpad T61):

- on the 4GB "Paradies" thumb drive, the live session starts as expected, running Unity 3d.

- on the 8GB "Müller" thumb drive, the live session does not start up as expected: there is no top panel and no launcher, the desktop show the purple background and two icons, but nothing else.
This is also described here (for 11.04): http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1659002
Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete I can log out of the session and then chose Unity 2D, whoch runs as expected.

It's very strange that the kind of USB drive should make the difference, but as everything else is the same, I am forced to believe that Ubuntu live does not work with some USB drives (notably the 8GB Müller drive).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: casper (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-30.48-generic 3.2.27
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-30-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu12
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Sep 8 22:32:13 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
SourcePackage: casper
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-04-28 (133 days ago)

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

Note that the effect can not be due to a defective thumb drive, as I tried two identical drives of brand "Müller". The live session does not run off either of them.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

I need to specify:

This is an issue *only* running the precise live image (12.04 or 12.04.1). Running the oneiric live image works flawless.

Comparison:

Precise live image:
- bootup is very slow (5-10 minutes to the desktop), even on the "dm" brand thumb drive
- Unity 3d does never start when running from the "Müller" brand drive

Oneiric live image:
- bootup is much faster (seconds to the desktop), on both types of thumb drives
- Unity 3d works on both thumb drives

The issue must hence be related to a change in Precise (USB drivers?)

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Nothing to do with casper, I'm highly suspecting that the issue is simply the USB driver or the kernel.
Note that USB disks can easily range from 2MB/s to 40MB/s, so the brand does matter a lot.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

> I'm highly suspecting that the issue is simply the USB driver or the kernel.

Since everything works fine in oneiric, you are probably right. The question then is, should I file a bug against the kernel or usb module? There certainly is a problem in precise, with some USB drives.

> Note that USB disks can easily range from 2MB/s to 40MB/s, so the brand does matter a lot.

My drives were in the range of 13-23 MB/s. However, how should a slow data rate prevent Unity from starting up? I'd expect it to start up, but slowly. Instead, it does not start up at all.

[Rüdiger Kupper (ruediger.kupper)]

This might be a duplicate of #500069.