Comment 10 for bug 538524

<Keybuk> the only way to get that is to call plymouth quit --retain-splash without ever calling plymouth deactivate first
<Keybuk> but that's nasty
<slangasek> Keybuk: aren't we doing exactly that right now in every case except the gdm case?
<Keybuk> no
<Keybuk> oh
<Keybuk> right, kdm + xdm do that
<Keybuk> maybe that's the kdm bug ;)
<slangasek> yep
<Keybuk> well, maybe that's the plymouth half
<Keybuk> an important spring has broken in whatever followed
<Keybuk> X failed to start or whatever
<Keybuk> but plymouth left the kernel in a silly state
<Keybuk> so you never get to see the true failure
<Keybuk> now I type, I remember something about failsafe in their ps

So, could those seeing this bug with Kubuntu try editing the pre-stop script in /etc/init/plymouth.conf to read as follows:

pre-stop script
    if [ "$UPSTART_EVENTS" = starting ] && ( [ "$JOB" = kdm ] || [ "$JOB" = xdm ]); then
        plymouth deactivate
        retain_splash=--retain-splash
    fi
    exec plymouth quit $retain_splash
end script

and report back whether this helps?