Further to my comments #28, #29, and #30: to confirm, the issue appears to be unrelated to nvidia, xorg.conf, etc. Just had the same happen on my HP G60-530US Notebook. That machine is using:
*-display:0 description: VGA compatible controller product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller vendor: Intel Corporation
While ssh'ed into the machine:
$ sudo killall plymouthd
kills off plymouth and I automatically get gdm with the standard login screen. Login is succesful and the desktop comes up fine. So... my guess would be that this is indeed a plymouth issue. Unfortunately you can't just purge plymouth as it's too tightly integrated into 10.04 & simulating a purge indicates that it would remove just about everything desktop related.
Further to my comments #28, #29, and #30: to confirm, the issue appears to be unrelated to nvidia, xorg.conf, etc. Just had the same happen on my HP G60-530US Notebook. That machine is using:
descripti on: VGA compatible controller
product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
*-display:0
This machine also stopped at 71%. ssh'ing into the machine (as I did on the other) and looking at the processes shows:
$ ps -e
PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:00 init
2 ? 00:00:00 kthreadd
3 ? 00:00:00 migration/0
4 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
5 ? 00:00:00 watchdog/0
6 ? 00:00:00 migration/1
7 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/1
8 ? 00:00:00 watchdog/1
9 ? 00:00:00 events/0
10 ? 00:00:00 events/1
11 ? 00:00:00 cpuset
12 ? 00:00:00 khelper
13 ? 00:00:00 netns
14 ? 00:00:00 async/mgr
15 ? 00:00:00 pm
17 ? 00:00:00 sync_supers
18 ? 00:00:00 bdi-default
19 ? 00:00:00 kintegrityd/0
20 ? 00:00:00 kintegrityd/1
21 ? 00:00:00 kblockd/0
22 ? 00:00:00 kblockd/1
23 ? 00:00:00 kacpid
24 ? 00:00:00 kacpi_notify
25 ? 00:00:00 kacpi_hotplug
26 ? 00:00:00 ata/0
27 ? 00:00:00 ata/1
28 ? 00:00:00 ata_aux
29 ? 00:00:00 ksuspend_usbd
30 ? 00:00:00 khubd
31 ? 00:00:00 kseriod
32 ? 00:00:00 kmmcd
35 ? 00:00:00 khungtaskd
36 ? 00:00:00 kswapd0
37 ? 00:00:00 ksmd
38 ? 00:00:00 aio/0
39 ? 00:00:00 aio/1
40 ? 00:00:00 ecryptfs-kthrea
41 ? 00:00:00 crypto/0
42 ? 00:00:00 crypto/1
45 ? 00:00:00 pciehpd
54 ? 00:00:00 kstriped
55 ? 00:00:00 kmpathd/0
56 ? 00:00:00 kmpathd/1
57 ? 00:00:00 kmpath_handlerd
58 ? 00:00:00 ksnapd
59 ? 00:00:00 kondemand/0
60 ? 00:00:00 kondemand/1
61 ? 00:00:00 kconservative/0
62 ? 00:00:00 kconservative/1
283 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
284 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
285 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_2
286 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_3
287 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_4
288 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_5
301 ? 00:00:00 usbhid_resumer
320 ? 00:00:00 jbd2/sda7-8
321 ? 00:00:00 ext4-dio-unwrit
322 ? 00:00:00 ext4-dio-unwrit
337 ? 00:00:05 plymouthd
355 ? 00:00:00 flush-8:0
358 ? 00:00:07 mountall
381 ? 00:00:00 upstart-udev-br
384 ? 00:00:00 udevd
537 ? 00:00:00 kpsmoused
705 ? 00:00:00 iwlagn
706 ? 00:00:00 phy0
719 ? 00:00:00 i915
765 ? 00:00:00 hd-audio0
818 ? 00:00:00 smbd
828 ? 00:00:00 rsyslogd
831 ? 00:00:00 sshd
832 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon
843 ? 00:00:00 smbd
862 ? 00:00:00 gdm-binary
863 ? 00:00:00 NetworkManager
868 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
870 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
871 ? 00:00:00 modem-manager
873 ? 00:00:00 console-kit-dae
940 ? 00:00:00 gdm-simple-slav
967 tty7 00:00:00 Xorg
978 ? 00:00:00 udevd
981 ? 00:00:00 udevd
992 tty4 00:00:00 getty
1007 ? 00:00:00 kerneloops
1019 tty5 00:00:00 getty
1022 ? 00:00:00 wpa_supplicant
1026 tty2 00:00:00 getty
1027 tty3 00:00:00 getty
1031 tty6 00:00:00 getty
1037 ? 00:00:00 acpid
1038 ? 00:00:00 cron
1039 ? 00:00:00 atd
1085 ? 00:00:00 cupsd
1245 tty1 00:00:00 getty
1267 ? 00:00:00 nmbd
1269 ? 00:00:00 plymouth
1270 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1370 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1371 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
1397 pts/0 00:00:00 ps
While ssh'ed into the machine:
$ sudo killall plymouthd
kills off plymouth and I automatically get gdm with the standard login screen. Login is succesful and the desktop comes up fine. So... my guess would be that this is indeed a plymouth issue. Unfortunately you can't just purge plymouth as it's too tightly integrated into 10.04 & simulating a purge indicates that it would remove just about everything desktop related.