initramfs rescue prompt blocked by splash screen

[Phillip Susi]

In precicse, when the splash screen is enabled, a boot failure that lands you at the initramfs emergency shell is not shown. To reproduce, just edit the boot line at the grub prompt and change the root UUID. If you remove the splash argument, you get the initramfs rescue shell like you should, if you do not, then you are just stuck at the blank plymouth splash screen forever.
---
ApportVersion: 2.0-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
DefaultPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.plymouth
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta amd64 (20120402)
MachineType: System manufacturer System Product Name
Package: plymouth 0.8.2-2ubuntu28
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-21-generic root=UUID=72902dde-cab0-4886-8021-70666d3a356d ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB: 0 radeondrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-21-generic root=UUID=72902dde-cab0-4886-8021-70666d3a356d ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-21.34-generic 3.2.13
Tags: precise
TextPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-21-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
dmi.bios.date: 08/15/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1904
dmi.board.asset.tag: To be filled by O.E.M.
dmi.board.name: P8P67 PRO REV 3.1
dmi.board.vendor: ASUSTeK Computer INC.
dmi.board.version: Rev 1.xx
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: Asset-1234567890
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Chassis Manufacture
dmi.chassis.version: Chassis Version
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAmericanMegatrendsInc.:bvr1904:bd08/15/2011:svnSystemmanufacturer:pnSystemProductName:pvrSystemVersion:rvnASUSTeKComputerINC.:rnP8P67PROREV3.1:rvrRev1.xx:cvnChassisManufacture:ct3:cvrChassisVersion:
dmi.product.name: System Product Name
dmi.product.version: System Version
dmi.sys.vendor: System manufacturer

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Phillip, I'm unable to reproduce this bug. If I set 'break=bottom' in grub, I see the plymouth splash and then I'm dropped to an initramfs prompt. Then when I ^D the shell, I see plymouth again and the boot continues.

Please run 'apport-collect 962764' from the affected machine, so we can see what hardware and kernel drivers are involved.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

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[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

From dmesg:

[ 2.275561] EXT4-fs (dm-1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[...]
[ 4.738639] EXT4-fs (dm-1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro
[...]
[ 6.107632] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810

It doesn't look like you have plymouth in your initramfs at all; which is normal, it's only included in the initramfs if you have the cryptsetup package installed. So this looks like a duplicate of bug #864466.

[Dominic Gross (domgross)]

Not so sure this is a duplicate. There are certainly a lot of strange effects on precise related to the rescue shell when PXE booting with NFS root device. Changing the gfxpayload as mentioned in #864466 has no effect here.

I am booting precise via PXE with NFS root device and can't get to a initramfs rescue prompt at all after a certain point in the boot process. Basically I want to drop into busybox shell in my aufs / overlayfs script to analyze some problems. I tried to open a shell in the relevant script (in nfs-bottom) as well as the break=bottom option and the rescue shell is always blocked by the splash screen (with quiet and splash removed, also tried nosplash).

If I use break=top (again without quiet and splash) I can get to a rescue shell on some machines, on other machines I can see the (initramfs) prompt, then some more kernel messages appear and everything blocks. On an almost identical local installation (local disk and users instead of LDAP/Kerberos/NFS) the break option works fine. I am not sure I fully understand what is going on here and want to make sure that I have a better idea of what is going on before filing a bug report.