ubuntu hangs during upstart boot, ie no sysinit is executed

[Thorsten Kocher]

the system hangs, just network and ssh is enabled.
fuser /dev/tty7 reports that plymouth is active on that tty.
As soon I kill the plymouth process system continuous to boot the other services like atd.
Bug Report is extracted of maschine after killing plymouth process.
I had also no problem with maschine if plymouth is removed. but mountall does depend on plymouth, which is not true, so removal with force dependency was done.

No X Server is installed, machine is just used as server.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: plymouth 0.8.2-2ubuntu28
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.22-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDmesg:
 [ 1807.335818] init: Failed to spawn setvtrgb main process: unable to execute: No such file or directory
 [ 1807.350785] init: plymouth-stop pre-start process (7605) terminated with status 1
Date: Wed Nov 30 20:17:12 2011
DefaultPlymouth: Error: command ['readlink', '/etc/alternatives/default.plymouth'] failed with exit code 1:
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.0.0-13-generic root=/dev/mapper/vg--root-lv--root ro
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB:
 0 radeondrmfb
 1 VESA VGA
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.0.0-13-generic root=/dev/mapper/vg--root-lv--root ro
SourcePackage: plymouth
TextPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-03 (57 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 07/08/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 2001
dmi.board.asset.tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
dmi.board.version: Rev X.0x
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr2001:bd07/08/2011:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKComputerINC.:rnM4A88TD-VEVO/USB3:rvrRevX.0x:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer
modified.conffile..etc.init.plymouth.conf: [deleted]

[Thorsten Kocher (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0-launchpad)]

with sysinit i mean SystemV services

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

> I had also no problem with maschine if plymouth is removed. but mountall does
> depend on plymouth, which is not true, so removal with force dependency was done.

It most certainly is true. Without plymouth, mountall can't ever prompt you for input when the filesystem fails to mount cleanly! How did you go about removing plymouth? Your bug report shows that at least parts of it are certainly installed on the system from which you filed this report.

Your report includes the following information:

> [ 1807.335818] init: Failed to spawn setvtrgb main process: unable to execute: No such file or directory

setvtrgb is part of the kbd package, which is a dependency of the core ubuntu system. Is your system in a consistent state? It sounds like either the system is not completely updated to 11.10, or critical packages are missing.

Your bug report also shows that you've modified /etc/default/grub:

> # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
> GRUB_TERMINAL=console

Did you make this change as part of debugging the plymouth problem, or was this an existing change? If you use the default graphical terminal, does that make a difference in the behavior of plymouth?

This output also suggests a possible problem:

> ProcFB:
> 0 radeondrmfb
> 1 VESA VGA

Your lspci output shows you have only one video card, but there are two framebuffer modules loaded. It's possible the kernel modules are colliding and causing a console hang, which happens to be cleared by killing plymouthd.

Finally, if you boot with the 'splash' option added to the commandline, does the system boot successfully?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for plymouth (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Sander van Grieken (sander-vangrieken)]

I hit a similar issue, although it isn't actually related to plymouth.

In my case I had a few network devices marked as auto in /etc/network/interfaces, including one that wasn't always present.

The ifup -a called in /etc/init/networking.conf waits a long time on these interfaces and eventually fails. But because a signal is not emitted before ifup ends, it triggers /etc/init/failsafe-boot.conf to wait until all network devices are up, which takes quite a while.

I marked these devices 'allow-hotplug' and my boot is back to normal.