[Lucid Beta2] After first boot Live Kubuntu Netbook doesn't start X and fallback to a textual terminal

[Paolo Sammicheli]

While ISO Testing, Live Mode

1) Created usb stick with USB Creator, with persistence
2) Booted first time. It worked
3) Playing around in the menu and browser, then rebooted to check persistence
4) It showed textual shell and nothing else.

I collected log with apport, in attach here.

Hardware: Dell Inspiron 1520. Graphic Card: nVidia GeForce 8600M GT

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Apr 8 08:39:11 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
LiveMediaBuild: Kubuntu-Netbook 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100406.1)
Package: kubuntu-netbook 1.169
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-19.28-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
SourcePackage: kubuntu-meta
Tags: lucid
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-19-generic i686

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This appears to be the same as bug #557000; marking as a duplicate.

Please provide the same 'initctl list' output requested in that bug.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Not a duplicate, apparently I misunderstood the symptoms in 557000.

http://launchpadlibrarian.net/43435763/initctl%20list.txt shows that kdm is running. If you change vts with Alt+F7 or Alt+F8, do you find kdm there?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Also, do you have more than one video output connected to this computer?

[Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1)]

No, it's a laptop without external video. Rebooting to check if X is in another vts.

See you Later.

[Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1)]

here I am again. First: it doesn't happen everytime. Today I booted 3 times succesfully with X and one time in textual mode. I checked all tty and no tty were graphical. tty8 was empty and in tty7 I found just a warning like this:

(process:939) GLib-WARNING: getpwuid_r() failed due to unknow user id (0)

Attached ps -ef output

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

> root 3136 1 0 09:11 ? 00:00:00 kdm

This shows that kdm is running, but no X server is running. Is there a kdm log?

[Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1)]

In attach kdm.log

As far as I can understand there's both successful and unsuccessful boots.

[Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1)]

@Steve: I'm going to erase this image for testing the new build (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-qa/2010-April/000919.html). I'm attaching here /var/log directory so if you need more log files you can grab this tar.bz2

I will let you know if in 20100410 Image the problem persist.

[Paolo Sammicheli (xdatap1)]

Confirmed on 20100410 Image. First boot went ok, second boot just textual shell.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

So, two things of note here in the logs.

First, from /var/log/daemon.log:
Apr 10 09:56:30 ubuntu kdm[3311]: X server startup timeout, terminating
Apr 10 09:56:31 ubuntu kdm[3311]: X server died during startup
Apr 10 09:56:31 ubuntu kdm[3311]: Failed to start X server. Starting failsafe X server.
Apr 10 09:56:34 ubuntu init: plymouth-stop pre-start process (4486) terminated with status 1

plymouth-stop is supposed to run before kdm starts; so the fact that it's running three seconds after kdm, and furthermore that it's failing, indicates a bug in the ordering.

Second, from /var/log/kdm.log:

/etc/gdm/failsafeXinit: riga 184: zenity: comando non trovato
/etc/gdm/failsafeXinit: riga 47: zenity: comando non trovato

waiting for X server to shut down ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

It appears that failsafe-X, despite being shipped in x11-common, relies on both zenity and gdm - so isn't going to work on Kubuntu, where we have neither by default.