upstart does not start cupsd and nut/upsd

[Oliver]

On my 10.04.3 LTS cupsd never starts automatically, although it is configured to do so. Even manually adding cupsd to the Start Programs dialog doesn't do the trick.

Starting cupsd manually works absolutely flawless.

The same happens with nutd. Nut is never started automatically, but start with no errors when done from a shell.

I have browsed several bug reports on and off Launchpad describing the problem as a bug in Upstart (Upstart experiencing a race condition that may render the console read-only), that was already fixed by the Upstart devs. There is also a Launchpad bug - that is closed because there is a bugfix. But as long as the bugfix is not rolled out to users... Several people beg to re-open this.

I am using 10.04 LTS - and it still sticks to version 0.6.5-8 of upstart. Obvoiously no modern version of Upstart ever got released for Lucid. I cannot upgrade Upstart without major operations beyond normal packet installation routine, and I do not want to risk rendering my system unusable if Upstart completely fails after upgrading it to unsupported versions.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: upstart 0.6.5-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-37.81-generic 2.6.32.49+drm33.21
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-37-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jan 15 23:20:45 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=de_DE.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: upstart

[Bill Turner (bturner01)]

No problem with cups butI have the same problem for nut in Ubuntu Precise (1204) - nut starts no error from a console command (/etc/init.d/nut start) but does not start automatically. Much searching has not returned any further help. I tried putting a nut.conf in /etc/init like :-

start on runlevel [2345]
# respawn
# expect fork
exec /etc/init.d/nut start

and that works if I issue a "start nut" but still no auto start. Tried with and without the "respawn" and "expect fork" - no difference but I expect there would not be anyway. I don't see any errors in the syslog. Nothing in nut.log either.
The standard package works perfectly in Ubuntu Oneiric (1110).
I absolutely cannot move to 1204 with this outstanding - our main supply here is unreliable at times and a UPS is essential. Any progress?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bill Turner (bturner01)]

In my case which is a UPS connected via a serial port. it appears to be a timing problem - looks like upsmon is not ready when upsdrvctl is executed in the standard init.d/nut script but am not entirely sure of that since I have not looked at the upsdrvctl code. Anyway. as a workaround, modified the nut script function start_stop_server "start" case paragraph to start upsd first and upsdrvctl second with a 30 second pause between as follows :-

        start)
          start-stop-daemon -S -q -p $upsd_pid -x $upsd \
           -- $UPSD_OPTIONS >/dev/null 2>&1
    sleep 30
          ! $upsdrvctl start >/dev/null 2>&1 && \
            log_progress_msg "(driver(s) failed)" || log_progress_msg "driver(s)"
          ;;

Then it works reliably. 15 Seconds is not enough, 30 seconds is sufficient but may be too much - probably not the most elegant solution but I'm happy with it. If the developer would like me to try other solutions, I'm happy to assist.