Plymouthd SIGSEGV on Lucid Xen Instance

[TJ Merritt]

Binary package hint: plymouth

Lucid is installed on a Xen instance. At boot time plymouthd SEGVs when requested to show the splash screen

init: plymouth-splash main process (347) terminated with status 2
init: plymouth main process (102) killed by SEGV signal
init: plymouth-log main process (435) terminated with status 1

plymouthd gets started from the plymouth upstart job with configuration at /etc/init/plymouth.conf
and has the following options

/sbin/plymouthd --mode=boot --attach-to-session

As a work around you can remove the --attach-to-session option.

The root cause of the problem is that state->boot_buffer gets creamed at src/main.c:1498 in attach_to_running_session.
Since attach_to_running_session doesn't allocate the buffer it should probably leave it alone when it fails.

lsb-release -rd:
Description: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
Release: 10.04

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

<slangasek> cjwatson: bug #594839> didn't you fix this already?
<cjwatson> slangasek: maybe something kind of similar - doesn't look quite the same?
<cjwatson> slangasek: I don't think I have any unsubmitted patches for plymouth at the moment
<cjwatson> slangasek: actually, it does look like one I have
<slangasek> oh; submitted upstream but not pushed to the package?
<cjwatson> slangasek: http://paste.ubuntu.com/450352/ is what's in my local tree and seems similar
<cjwatson> may not be in the package yet
<cjwatson> yes, and that went upstream as c859e580a197a121bb5666fe2628b38ec88da9e4
<cjwatson> it was the day before 10.04 released so wasn't worth shoving in

[Josh Goodall (inopinatus)]

I encountered this problem, with more severe side-effects, on Linode.

When plymouth segfaults, it causes mountall to give up:
mountall: Skipping mounting /var since Plymouth is not available

which is a nasty way for a boot to die.

Removing --attach-to-session appears to be a workaround.

[Josh Goodall (inopinatus)]

I should add, problem encountered with 12.04 LTS on Linode.