Computer fails to completely boot hangs at tty login

[Gaye Donnellan]

Binary package hint: gdm

The computer did not actually "hang", it merely would not load the GUI. I have my system setup to boot with automatic logon which has been fine until now.
I punched in my user name & password then sudo reboot after which the system booted up fine.

My system is running Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 the package is GDM version 2.30.0-0ubuntu5

Checked the logs and the system logs had these warnings regarding gdm-binary in the system log;

gdm-binary[903]: WARNING: Unable to find users: no seat-id found
gdm-binary[903]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 1.268544 seconds
gdm-binary[903]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.253828 seconds
gdm-binary[903]: WARNING: GdmDisplay: display lasted 0.226891 seconds

In the Xorg.0.log;

(EE) May 13 13:31:31 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
(EE) May 13 13:31:31 NVIDIA(0): system's kernel log for additional error messages and
(EE) May 13 13:31:31 NVIDIA(0): consult the NVIDIA README for details.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(II) UnloadModule: "nvidia"
(II) UnloadModule: "wfb"
(II) UnloadModule: "fb"
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
  at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.
Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.0.log" for additional information.

 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log

kernel log;

8.284327] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: failed to evaluate _DSM: 5
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.284597] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: Detected an NV40 generation card (0x04e000a2)
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.284993] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PROM
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.285007] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: ... BIOS signature not found
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.285009] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: Attempting to load BIOS image from PRAMIN
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.321778] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: ... appears to be valid
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.321782] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: BIT BIOS found
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.321785] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: Bios version 05.51.22.26
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.321788] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: BIT table 'd' not found
May 9 21:43:27 gayez-komputa kernel: [ 8.321791] [drm] nouveau 0000:00:05.0: Found Display Configuration Block version 3.0

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: gdm 2.30.0-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu May 13 14:25:27 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gdm

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems an nvidia driver issue

[Gaye Donnellan (gayedonn)]

It seems you could be right about nvidia I reckon it is the nouveau driver. I decided to purge all nvidia drivers, blacklisted nouveau and installed the latest nvidia driver from nvidia. So far no problem, Xorg.0.log is good as is kernel log.

However system log is showing:

gdm-binary[899]: WARNING: Unable to find users: no seat-id found
gdm-session-worker[1172]: GLib-GObject-CRITICAL: g_value_get_boolean: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_BOOLEAN (value)' failed.

These warnings show up in the daemon log also.
So it seems there must be a problem related to gdm

[Marshall Scorcio (marshalium)]

This bug affects my machine too.
It started to occur randomly after I upgraded to Lucid.
If I login and run "sudo start gdm" then gdm starts up correctly.

Onboard nVidia GeForce 6150.
64bit Ubuntu 10.04
gdm 2.30.2-0ubuntu1

As you can see, I upgraded to the gdm package in ubuntu-proposed but that did not fix the issue.

It looks like X.org is trying to start before the nVidia kernel module is loaded. X.org fails at 06:08:19 and the kernel module does not seem to be loaded until 06:08:21

From Xorg.log:
(EE) May 22 06:08:19 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
(EE) May 22 06:08:19 NVIDIA(0): system's kernel log for additional error messages and
(EE) May 22 06:08:19 NVIDIA(0): consult the NVIDIA README for details.
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***

From kern.log:
May 22 06:08:21 uss-enterprise kernel: [ 14.793712] nvidia 0000:00:0d.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LMC9] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
May 22 06:08:21 uss-enterprise kernel: [ 14.793722] nvidia 0000:00:0d.0: setting latency timer to 64
May 22 06:08:21 uss-enterprise kernel: [ 14.793728] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:00:0d.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem
May 22 06:08:21 uss-enterprise kernel: [ 14.793997] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86_64 Kernel Module 195.36.15 Fri Mar 12 00:29:13 PST 2010

[Reverend Entity (reverendentity)]

I'm currently experiencing the exact same problem, except when I enter my login and pw I just get a shell. I can load the GUI by typing 'startx', but I have no Ethernet access (and therefore no Internet access) and the hard disk I have connected to the system in an external USB housing is unavailable. I can boot in recovery mode, use the netroot option and then load X so that I have Internet connectivity (which is how I'm posting this), but there is no network indicator visible and I still can't access my external USB drive.

The system I'm running is mostly a stock Dell Dimension 4600 (2.66 GHz, 1GB RAM), but the video card is a Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD4650.