[Lucid] Xorg server sometimes fails to start

[Kai Krakow]

The Xorg server sometimes fails to start and only comes up in safe mode, telling that it was not able to initialize the graphics card or driver (I don't remember exactly). Choosing "restart now" in the offered options after waiting a few seconds fixes this, the Xorg server comes up with the correct driver loaded and fully functional.

I upgraded a production machine from 9.10 to 10.04 since Lucid is marked as LTS and I thought it would be nice step to a long-lasting stable system. Now different instabilities show up, one of it being this problem. The system needs to be used to print delivery forms and invoices for a food delivery service and the reduced (failsafe) graphics mode does not fit the POS system right. The system is shut down every evening and booted every late morning. This needs to be fixed asap.

Additional information:
Using nvidia proprietary drivers. My suspect is that upstart is just too fast with starting the x-server (it comes up after about 5-7 seconds after grub), and the nvidia kernel module is probably not yet loaded until then.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Moving to the Ubuntu bug tracker.

Note that the proprietary nvidia X drivers load the associated module themselves, so there's no chance of a race here

[Kai Krakow (hurikhan77)]

So, to further debug this: What else could be the problem? Where should I look? Apparently I don't have remote access to the system in question, so looking into the issue may take some time on my side.

[Daniel Stone (danielstone)]

I noticed similar action when plymouth was changed to alternative

[Kai Krakow (hurikhan77)]

> Note that the proprietary nvidia X drivers load the
> associated module themselves, so there's no
> chance of a race here

Well, attached a log and it clearly says the kernel module failed... But I think this is a remnant of a more generic problem, as the other log shows (it fails despite no nvidia module involved - it's the failsafe session).

[Kai Krakow (hurikhan77)]

I suppose this has a similar cause than the current cups problem in upstart. So it may be a duplicate of #554172.

[Kai Krakow (hurikhan77)]

I request this being a duplicate of bug 554172.

[bugbot (bugbot)]

Thank you for reporting this issue about a driver from the
linux-restricted-modules package. lrm-2.4.24 was shipped with Ubuntu
8.04 which reached end-of-life for desktop support on May 12th, 2011.

For that reason, this bug report is being closed at this time. I'm
marking it wontfix because what you describe is probably a valid issue,
but there are no plans to work on lrm 2.4.24 bugs further.

The issue may be resolved in a newer version. If not, aside from filing
a new bug report, another angle may be to file it directly with the
driver vendor.