Comment 34 for bug 444597

Simon, after some work we found this:

- With upstart there is no boot logging (it's not supported yet!; /var/log/bootlog is empty), so if some daemon from "/etc/init.d" fails to load it may leave no trace.

- With upstart in Karmic, some services (scripts in /etc/init) run in parallel. But scripts from /etc/init.d are run in sequence (the sequence defined on /etc/rcX.d/ where X is the runlevel; /etc/rc2.d/ by default):
     + If any script in /etc/rc2.d/ freezes (in an infinite loop or deadlock), the next scripts won't be run. That means that, for example, if postfix (S20) deadlocks, other daemons like cups (S50) and cron (S89) won't start.
     + X and the login manager (gdm) are loaded in parallel with those /etc/rcX.d scripts, so the user does not see the /etc/rc2.d/ scripts output, and won't notice if some script is crying for help.

So in the end the problem is: If any daemon fails to load *before* cups, you might not see any error message and it may not leave any log message; you will just notice that cups is missing.