Intrepid: quiet splash freezes but verbose boots up fine

[Piraja]

After some recent alpha upgrade of Intrepid Ibex, the quiet splash has not worked properly on my laptop (Acer Travelmate 2354). The splash freezes at about one fifth of the process bar and booting up will not continue. Verbose booting (i.e. after removing "quiet splash") works very fast and fine, i.e. the boot-up process does not hang in the verbose mode.

I posted a bit more about this in Ubuntu Forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5849133#post5849133

UPDATE Sept. 25: After some new distribution updates, I tried quiet splash again and the behaviour has changed. The process bar no longer freezes, just stops for a couple of seconds at the same spot where it previously froze completely. However, on the couple of occasions I retried it, usplash was otherwise interrupted: first, by a blue screen asking me whether I would like to repair xorg, resume normal boot, etc. (my keyboard stopped functioning properly at this point: the only keys to use seemed to be the enter key and backspace, while the arrow keys returned just weird combinations of characters), and the second time just for a brief black screen with an error message. Might have been the first of these lines in my /var/log/messages:

Sep 25 08:14:19 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 71.454761] ACPI: EC: non-query interrupt received, switching to interrupt mode
Sep 25 08:14:31 ubuntu-laptop pulseaudio[6052]: ltdl-bind-now.c: Failed to find original dlopen loader.
Sep 25 08:14:31 ubuntu-laptop pulseaudio[6052]: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_NICE, (31, 31)) failed: Operation not permitted
Sep 25 08:14:31 ubuntu-laptop pulseaudio[6052]: main.c: setrlimit(RLIMIT_RTPRIO, (9, 9)) failed: Operation not permitted

[Jaap Haitsma (jaap)]

I'm also seeing similar behavior. I enabled show "text during boot". It freezes when it's showing "Waiting for root file system". It boots fine when I do the recovery boot

[Guo Xi (guoxi349)]

i install intrepid beta on my DELL D620. have the same problem.

[Jaap Haitsma (jaap)]

I forgot to mention that my laptop is a Dell latitude D410

Maybe it's a problem related to DELL laptops

[Guo Xi (guoxi349)]

i removed "quiet splash", but nothing changed. the boot stoped at "loading manual drivers". after that, i reset the system, it works fine.

[Piraja (piraja-deactivatedaccount)]

My verbose boot-up hangs occasionally at "Loading hardware drivers" too, and I wonder if this is related to my WiFi card (Buffalo AirStation PCMCIA WLAN card) and bw43-fwcutter. Choosing either "Recovery mode" or "Last succesful boot" helps. Once I could make the boot-up continue by detaching the WLAN card for a second or two and re-attaching it then.

But this might not be the same issue as the fact that while the quiet splash boot-up hangs early on (about one fifth of the process bar), verbose boot-up works...

[Justyn Butler (justyn)]

I have identical symptoms with Intrepid Beta.

The boot almost always stops at 1/5 through progress bar. It does not recover from this and I have to hold the power button on my laptop.

I was convinced that it did it every time but once I did enough boots I discovered that occasionally it will make it through booting fine on it's own.

When I remove the "quiet splash" kernel option it boots fine most times - there appears to be a positive effect in removing these options.

But in my case at least, that is not the whole story, because if I keep rebooting it will occasionally fail in apparently the same manner (though there is no progress bar of course the timing, CPU and HDD activity dying down are the same). In these situations it normally does so at "loading hardware drivers" exactly as Pajari and Guo Xi have stated above.

In the same vein it will also sometimes fail when booting into recovery mode (which has no splash screen anyway).
When booting into recovery mode the failure instead seems to occur after the line:
     iwl3945: Tunable channels: 13 802.11bg, 23 802.11a channels

It took many boots to discover that the "quiet splash" fix did not fix the problem 100% of the time, but I wonder if that fix is a red herring.

My hardware is a Dell Inspiron 9400. It has Intel 3945ABG wireless using iwl3945 driver, Intel 945GM graphics, and Intel Core Duo CPU.

[Thomas David (nemphis)]

Can confirm this.

Distro: Kubuntu Intrepid Beta 1
System: Acer Aspire 5100

I've encrypted my root partition with cryptsetup. With the splash enabled, the system freezes after I entered the passphrase to unlock the root partition. The system doesn't respond any more. CTRL+ALT+DEL or ALT+PRINT+B doesn't have any effect and I can only use the power button to restart my system.

Like the posters above the system boots well if the 'splash' option is removed from the boot options.

[Jaap Haitsma (jaap)]

Fixed for me after installing the new kernel 2.6.27-5 of today

[Thomas David (nemphis)]

Fixed for me with kernel 2.6.27-5 too.

[Philip Peitsch (philip-peitsch)]

This *was* fixed for me in kernel 2.6.27-5 initially too, but the update this morning broke it again. I've included the aptitude update log from this morning as this provides which packages & versions are being installed. It's 61 packages long, but I can see probably about half of those could have no possible effect.

I suspect it might be one of the system packages that was just updated has triggered this again... am not quite sure why though.

[Ryan Davies (iownsu)]

I can also confirm this.

Running the latest kernel on a Compaq M2000
model name : Mobile AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+
cpu MHz : 1591.821

[Justyn Butler (justyn)]

I'm now running kernel 2.6.27-5-generic and still seeing the problem intermittently.

[Piraja (piraja-deactivatedaccount)]

Same here, still with kernel 2.6.27-5-generic. Hard reboot needed when the (occasional) freeze occurs.

[Klaus S. Madsen (ubuntu-hjernemadsen)]

I saw this on a Fujitsu Lifebook P7320 when booting the installer from Kubuntu 8.10 Beta 1, and also after installation. After I updated yesterday evening (12 hours ago) to amongst other things kernel 2.6.27-5 I haven't seen the problem. However I've only performed 4-5 boots after the upgrade.

The machins is a Intel Core Duo (i.e. not Core 2), with 2 GB RAM, and an Intel graphics card, an Intel 3945 wireless card, and a Marvell ethernet card. I you need more information, I'll happily provide it.

[Bakurt (jimbakurt)]

Same problem with a Sony VAIO VGN-C2Z
Distro : Ubuntu Intrepid beta 1
Kernel : 2.6.27-5-generic

No changes in the kernel.

If you need more details, I'll send.

[G3R (germanp1982)]

Same problem here since last usplash updates. I need to remove quiet option but usplash works

[Tim Wright (timw)]

Not sure if I have exactly the same issue BUT my test machine (with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, using the open-source X driver when the machine is up) hangs with "quiet splash" (I do *not* get to see the splash screen). Interrupting grub and removing "quiet splash" allows the machine to boot just fine. This didn't work on initial beta install, did work a few days ago, and now does not work again. With my video card, the splash thing seems to be somewhat broken currently.

[Thomas David (nemphis)]

It still works for me with 2.6.27-6-generic.

[Piraja (piraja-deactivatedaccount)]

After updating to kernel 2.6.27-6-generic, the quiet splash has no longer frozen on my Acer Travelmate 2354. The process bar halts for a couple of seconds at the same spot where it previously completely froze (about one tenth of the whole, rather than one fifth as I earlier sloppily estimated), but then it continues as it should.

[Justyn Butler (justyn)]

I'm still seeing this problem intermittently with 2.6.27-7-generic.

[Zachary Larsen (chiefmanyrabbitguteat)]

Same here. It seems to hang on when it loads the drivers for the Intel 3945ABG wireless card. I have much better success if I boot in Verbose mode, but it still isn't 100%.

The same behaviour was exhibited on the Intrepid Beta LiveCD, but I worked around it by removing "quiet" from the boot option. (not quite sure how I did that, but there is an option at boot from the CD)

Dell Latitude D820
Intel 3945 ABG Wireless
nVidia Quatro (spelling??) Graphics Card - 256 MB RAM
Intel Centrino Core2 Duo @ 1.83ghz

[Zachary Larsen (chiefmanyrabbitguteat)]

PS - using Kernel 2.6.27-7

[Zachary Larsen (chiefmanyrabbitguteat)]

Hey, I hate to be Mr. Spammer here, but I caught this bug on one of the rare occasions when it happens in Verbose mode, and snapped a photo of the screen with my digital camera. I thought the output could be of use to somebody maybe...

[Simon Morgan (sjmorgan)]

I think I'm also seeing this on my Mac Mini. It has happened around 2 out of 4 boots since installing and has so far worked after rebooting. On of these freezes was during my first boot of the install cd, the other was after upgrading everything after the install.

[Zachary Larsen (chiefmanyrabbitguteat)]

There was a usplash update an hour or so ago. It seems to have fixed it! I had 3 quiet boots in a row!

[Steve Romanow (slestak989)]

With 2.6.27-7, I still lock up on warm reboots. Inspiron e1505.

[Steve Romanow (slestak989)]

With new 2.6.27-7.11 I am able to warm reboot. I will watch it and test different scenarios.

[Adam (armware)]

i get this as well, however i noticed that pressing any key - i choose a non-action key, shift - it'll continue to progress incrementally with the keystrokes up to a certain point where it continues on its own. it's something like 20 keystrokes before this happens.
this is during the loading bar that goes left-right-left-right back and forth a few times, then when it goes to the left-right that doesn't go back and forth it stops again, and a few keystrokes gets it moving again.

man i hope that makes sense.

[Adam (armware)]

sorry. forgot this detail.

uname -a
Linux lou 2.6.27-8-generic #1 SMP Thu Nov 6 17:38:14 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[drewp (drewp)]

Like Adam, I have found that when the progress bar stalls at about 10%, I can hold down a key like shift to get the progress bar to the end. Letting go at any point makes the progress stop again.

This is on intrepid with either 2.6.27-7.16 or 2.6.27-9.19, 64-bit dual AMD, on an HP dv9000 laptop. Wifi is AR242x with ndiswrapper.

Suspend also stalls with black screen but keyboard lights and fans still on, and holding down shift key for a while seems to let the suspend finish (fan stops, sleeping light starts to blink). But around the time of these problems, resume from suspend has also stopped working. I have no workaround yet for that. The resume wakes up, keyboard lights turn back on, but even holding the shift key never brings back the OS.

[Steve Beattie (sbeattie)]

This bug was reported in the Intrepid development cycle; removing regression-potential and marking as regression-release.

[Adam (armware)]

This bug now only happens when booting (or shutting down) when on battery. Plugged in it does just fine.

uname -a:
Linux lou 2.6.28-13-generic #45-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 30 22:12:12 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Something else I've noticed recently when booting is that on the screen that shows [OK] or [FAILED] on the right. When the cursor stops blinking the computer stops booting. Pressing any key (as stated above) will cause it to start blinking again, and start booting again.

I guess I'm saying I hope the blinking cursor helps to narrow down the cause of this. Until it's fixed I'll keep adding all the details that I can.

Is there somewhere else I should keep an eye on for a fix on this?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

The usplash package has been superseded by plymouth and has been removed from the Ubuntu archive. Closing all related bugs.