[i945] jaunty alpha 4 live cd hangs on macbook when starting gnome

[barnex]

The Jaunty alpha 4 live cd stops responding on a macbook 1.1 (1st generation, intel core duo 32bit, 2GB memory).

In Ubuntu, this happens right after the desktop background has appeared and before any gnome panels are loaded. The mouse cursor "hourglass" stops spinning but can still be moved around. Ctrl-alt backspace does not work.

Update: bug also present in kubuntu. The live cd stops loading when the first four icons of the kubuntu boot splash are visible (the last one shown is the desktop-icon).

Update: bug still present in jaunty alpha 5.

I have tried to boot 3 times, each time with exactly the same result. One trial was booting from an external cd drive rather than from the built-in one, with the same result.

In all cases, the CPU did not seem idle, however. Macbooks tend to make an annoying sound when the CPU is in the lowest power saving state, and I could hear it periodically switching between power saving states, indicating the CPU was at least doing something. I gave it about 5 minutes, but gnome still did not load.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

assigning to the linux package

[John Dong (jdong)]

I've been experiencing the same thing on my Macbook 2.1 (Core 2 duo, GMA950, 4GB RAM)

I've identified the hang to coincide with Compiz starting. The system completely hardlocks and does not leave any log traces at next bootup.

I can also reproduce this in Fedora 10 and opensuse 11.1. Compiz works fine in Intrepid though.

[barnex (barnex)]

I have just reproduced this bug in ubuntu jaunty alpha 6.
I will check if the system lock also happens in xubuntu, to see if not having compiz does indeed provide a workaround.

[barnex (barnex)]

The Xubuntu jaunty alpha 6 live cd boots without problems. This seems to confirm John Dong's statement that compiz is causing the hardlocks.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

marking as confirmed, importance high...
could you please attach the output of lspci -vvnn?
thank you

[barnex (barnex)]

The requested list of my PCI devices is attached to this message.

[barnex (barnex)]

Here is the same output as root. I am sorry some entries were <access denied> in the above post.

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

thank you.
could you try booting without the "quiet splash" options in grub and tell me if you see any errors on the screen before it locks up?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

[barnex (barnex)]

When booting verbosely, the text scrolls by too fast to read. I can only tell that no errors are reported after "starting gnome display manager...". Shortly thereafter the login screen appears and after automatically logging in and hearing the ubuntu startup sound, the system freezes. If you really need the output, I can try taking pictures of it this evening.

I have then booted with "safe graphics mode" and I wound up in a console without x. "startx" failed. I have attached the contents of /var/log which I scp'ed after trying startx. I hope this output is useful.

note: this was with the alpha 4 live cd, please let me know if you require the same on alpha 6.

[barnex (barnex)]

Some additional info:

I can confirm compiz is causing the lockup. I installed compiz under the xubuntu jaunty live cd.
When I ran "compiz --replace" compiz gave the usual "Checking for ..." output, followed by the error:
/usr/bin/compiz: 455: /usr/local/bin/compiz: not found
exec: 455: /usr/bin/xfwm: not found
After which xubuntu kept running without problems

Then I ran "sudo compiz --replace" and the system locked up in exactly the same way as gnome and kde do: the desktop background is visible and the mouse can be moved around, but the system is locked.

Finally, after a reboot and mounting my hard drive, i tried to capture the output of "sudo compiz --replace > /mnt/sda3/out 2> /mnt/sda3/err". Of course, the live cd locked up, and when I rebooted from my hard disk I found the following from the standard output:

Checking for Xgl: not present.
xset q doesn't reveal the location of the log file. Using fallback /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Detected PCI ID for VGA:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present.
Trying again with indirect rendering:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present.
Checking for non power of two support: present.
Checking for Composite extension: present.
Checking screen 1Comparing resolution (1280x800) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for Software Rasterizer: Not present.
Checking for nVidia: not present.
Checking for FBConfig: present.
Checking for Xgl: not present.

Nothing had been saved from the error output, however.

[Frank Groeneveld (frankgroeneveld)]

I have the same problem on my Macbook Core Duo (first generation).
I also tried to put a "fake compiz" script in my path which starts metacity. However, this results in a system that doesn't load the desktop (but doesn't hang either).

[barnex (barnex)]

Perhaps an alternative to the "fake compiz" script is to edit ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/%gconf.xml
and replace "compiz" by "metacity" (occurs twice, once as default and once as current window manager).

[Stewart Johnston (stooj)]

Just tried the Jaunty beta livecd and this seems to be fixed (Macbook 2,1).
Many many thanks to whomever is responsible for sorting this.

[barnex (barnex)]

Confirmed that it is fixed in the beta, works fine on a macbook 1,1
Thanks guys!

[barnex (barnex)]

Just a follow-up, for those who are interested. The problem was fixed in the release version of Jaunty, but I could reproduce the exact same lock-up be enabling UXA video acceleration in my xorg.conf. (Well strangely, the first time of about 10 trials it did not lock up, but since then it reproducibly did). So I guess this problem seemed to be UXA-related.