Problems with plymouth (including documentation)

[Rafal Zawadzki]

Binary package hint: plymouth

First of all, plymouth prevents X from start. I checked plymouth files in /etc/init/ and there are rules for gdm, xdm kdm etc. I am using another login manager - slim, but there is no rule for it. I understand it, so to avoid manually stopping plymouth every run i decided to turn it off.

I checked /usr/share/doc/plymouth/README.Debian file and I found there below informations:

""'
 1) Remove all of the plymouth-theme-* packages from your system,
    including the text ones. Plymouth will remain installed to
    permit boot-time prompts.

2) Remove "splash" from the kernel command-line. You can do this
    per-boot, or make it permanent by changing the
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/default/grub
 """

I made both things, but none of them dosn't turn off plymouth. They just prevent plymouth to use the theme. But service is started - I have to run stop plymouth again to start the X.

I tried to apt-get remove plymouth - but then It want remove all base packages, which seems completely weird for me - why just another "splash" solution (third one? I cannot count all of them) is fundamental part of systme?

I would like to have possibility to remove plymouth and I think that documentation should be fixed to provide correct solution to turn off the plymouth.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: plymouth 0.8.2-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Apr 20 10:31:37 2010
DefaultPlymouth: Error: command ['readlink', '/etc/alternatives/default.plymouth'] failed with exit code 1:
MachineType: Dell Inc. XPS M1330
ProcCmdLine: root=UUID=92b51091-98b8-4231-9420-c71ffefbde54 ro crashkernel=384M-2G:64M,2G-:128M
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=C
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
SourcePackage: plymouth
TextPlymouth: Error: command ['readlink', '/etc/alternatives/text.plymouth'] failed with exit code 1:
UdevDb: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
dmi.bios.date: 07/08/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A12
dmi.board.name: 0N6705
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA12:bd07/08/2008:svnDellInc.:pnXPSM1330:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0N6705:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
dmi.product.name: XPS M1330
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Thank you for taking the time toreport this bug and help to improve Ubuntu.

plymouth is not a splash screen, it's an I/O multiplexer which supports multiple outputs - including graphical splash. It is an essential component of the boot process in Lucid regardless of whether the boot splash is of interest, and cannot be disabled.

The bug here is with slim integration with plymouth. The slim package needs to be converted to use an upstart job instead of an init script, as gdm, kdm, xdm, and lxdm all have been, so that plymouth can be told to stop when slim is starting. As long as slim uses a sysvinit script instead of an upstart job, this is not possible.

[Rafal Zawadzki (bluszcz)]

As I wrote, I know why plymouth is not stopping when I am using slim, so this is not issue.

The problem is, that documentation leads to misunderstand - informations providen there don't work, simply as that.

You mentioned also, that "plymouth is not splash screen, it,s an I/O multiplexer".

So, there is another problem in package description:

apt-cache show plymouth

Description: graphical boot animation and logger - main package
 Plymouth is an application that runs very early in the boot process
 (even before the root filesystem is mounted!) that provides a graphical
 boot animation while the boot process happens in the background.

After reading this description - I was more than sure that it's just "another splash screen" which hides important information from boot process... How can I read what plymouth is?

bluszcz@atomic [(wto kwi 20) 11:06]:~
$ ls /usr/share/doc/plymouth/
changelog.Debian.gz changelog.gz copyright README.Debian
bluszcz@atomic [(wto kwi 20) 11:06]:~

The only README is Debian specific and doesn't provide information what plymouth is. And due to your reply - apt-cache show plymouth provide informations which are not correct.

However, I managed not to run plymouth using stupid hack/trick - my Ubuntu Lucid boots faster now. I am most than sure that I don't need it. As Ubuntu user I want to have possibility to remove package which is not necessary.

But let's come back to package again - descriptions and docs must be fixed.

[Rafal Zawadzki (bluszcz)]

BTW, I have just checked Dependencies of plymouth, and it's depend on libdrm-radeon1 for example...

I cannot remove libdrm-radeon1 because of plymouth, which is absurd. I don't have ATI card (Intel here), and DRM is now part of base system? :O Should I submit another bug for this libdrm-radeon1?

[Rafal Zawadzki (bluszcz)]

I took a look at:

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Plymouth

and even there I cannot find any informations about "advantages of Plymouth". The only nice thing (which I found there) is logging of boot process.

But I read there "For systems that don't have DRM mode settings drivers, plymouth falls back to text mode.".

What does it means? "text" mode is simply theme with text mode (default one I think) or it's real text mode which doesn't prevents X from start? I am asking because I don't understand why and how X cannot start because of plymouth. Maybe without using DRM plymouth can be less problematic?

Where I can read about "I/O multiplexer" functionality?

[Rafal Zawadzki (bluszcz)]

Another thing about documentation and /etc/default/grub file:

root@atomic:~# ls /etc/default/grub
ls: cannot access /etc/default/grub: No such file or directory
root@atomic:~#

Fresh update (made 5 minutes ago).

[Maxim (bmx666)]

Every time when you fix/update/create/install/deleting or something else with plymouth's splash YOU MUST EXEC:
sudo /usr/sbin/update-initramfs -u