No plymouth graphical boot on Intel GPU

[Adam Drew]

Binary package hint: plymouth

Description:
On boot no Plymouth graphical splash screen is displayed. After BIOS the screen stays black, then powers off, then powers back on, then text is displayed (at native resolution indicating KMS is working), and then we fade smoothly into GDM. The text displayed on boot is the following (taken from boot.log:)

fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
/dev/sda1: clean, 196331/14893056 files, 7424434/59571200 blocks
 * Starting AppArmor profiles Skipping profile in /etc/apparmor.d/disable: usr.bin.firefox
[ OK ]
Loading the saved-state of the serial devices...
 * Setting sensors limits [ OK ]
 Speech-dispatcher configured for user sessions
 * Starting VirtualBox kernel modules [ OK ]
 * Starting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd [ OK ]
  PulseAudio configured for per-user sessions
Starting LCDd: LCDd.
 * Enabling additional executable binary formats binfmt-support [ OK ]
 * Checking battery state... [ OK ]

On shutdown I do see a graphical purple screen with an Ubuntu logo and some animated dots. On boot up, however, I only see the black screens, the above text, and then GDM.

Environment:
Ubuntu 10.04
2.6.32-21-generic 64bit
plymouth 0.8.2-2ubuntu2
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)
 Subsystem: Dell Device 042b
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 31
 Memory at fe000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
 Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
 I/O ports at 1800 [size=8]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: i915
 Kernel modules: i915

Other Information:
- I checked other bugs in launchpad but I couldn't find anything that completely matched
- I asked around on IRC and no one reported having a similar issue
- I am using stock 10.04 with no third-party repositories
- I have not edited my grub config

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Please post the contents of /proc/cmdline.

[Adam Drew (adamrdrew)]

BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=dec89f2a-d547-4c47-a600-e54cbd78b54c ro vga=792 splash quiet splash

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Ok. What's unusual here is that the text shows up on boot; this is supposed to be hidden whenever booting with the 'splash' option, so this is not the same as bug #540801. What's the output of 'zcat /boot/initrd.img-$(uname -r) | cpio -t | grep plymouth'?

[Adam Drew (adamrdrew)]

Thanks for the quick attention on this! Very impressive.

adam@zylog-vostro:~$ zcat /boot/initrd.img-$(uname -r) | cpio -t | grep plymouth
47145 blocks

I was surprised that it wasn't in the output so I decided to double check:

adam@zylog-vostro:~$ zcat /boot/initrd.img-$(uname -r) | cpio -t | grep -i pl
lib/modules/2.6.32-21-generic/kernel/drivers/hid/hid-pl.ko
lib/modules/2.6.32-21-generic/kernel/drivers/hid/hid-sunplus.ko
lib/modules/2.6.32-21-generic/kernel/drivers/hid/hid-apple.ko
47145 blocks

Not there. Interesting.

[Miika Laaksonen (miika)]

I can confirm the previous comment. Plymouth isn't in the initrd.img.

[Adam Drew (adamrdrew)]

I was able to get plymouth working via:

$ sudo update-alternatives --auto default.plymouth
$ sudo update-initramfs -u

Works fine now. I wonder if this was just an issue because I had originally installed on RC1? I have a machine that should be well supported; Dell Vostro v13 with Intel Graphics. Machine shipped with Ubuntu 9.04. I didn't upgrade, I did a fresh install.

This was most likely a bug in an older version of the installer. I would re-install to test but I am using this as my primary machine it would be a burden as I have all my data and applications set up already.

- Adam

[Miika Laaksonen (miika)]

Reinstall of plymouth also made the trick. However, I still don't understand why plymouth didn't work after 9.10->10.4 upgrade without reinstall.

[Sb (sb56637)]

Same here, I don't have plymouth in the initrd after a fresh install of Kubuntu 10.04 Final with Intel graphics. I tried the instructions here to add Plymouth, but it makes no difference.

[Dmitry Pankratov (dremon)]

echo FRAMEBUFFER=y | sudo tee /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash
sudo update-initramfs -u

Solves this issue for me on Asus netbook.

[Sb (sb56637)]

Thanks dmitry, comment #9 helped me with my Acer 4810T. However, there is a a rather long delay after Grub screen with nothing but a black screen and a flashing cursor. Then the backlight turns off, on again, and then the bootscreen loads, apparently via Plymouth? And there are always console messages that briefly flash into view when it transitions from plymouth to KDM. Still a very jarring, unprofessional boot experience.

[Esteban Zuñiga C. (esteban151094)]

I got the problem at my Toshiba Satellite L505. Intel GMA4500. In kubuntu and ubuntu 10.04 is the same thing.

[Esteban Zuñiga C. (esteban151094)]

4 another thing, I have upgraded the kernel and the plymouth, and also the initframes as well (IDK if it has something to do) and the problem just stay being there.

[Esteban Zuñiga C. (esteban151094)]

Could someone get it working yet?

[Khaosaming (borai)]

I can confirm that Plymouth is not yet working on Acer Aspire 5310 and Ubuntu 10.04 clean install with the latest updates. The behaviour at boot is the same as above: no Plymouth screen but blinking cursor, screen backlight on and off and text is displayed no matter what the splash settings are. I tried the tricks above (re-install, command line) to no avail. Boot splash remains off. The Ubuntu image with dots is displayed at shut down, though.

[Khaosaming (borai)]

The following page has a fix that seems to have worked for me.
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/quick-tipplymouth-themes-in-ubuntu-10-04-lucid-lynx.html

The part that worked:
sudo -s
echo FRAMEBUFFER=y >>/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash
update-initramfs -u

After reboot Plymouth appeared, although first time out of resolution, but on second boot it seemed to be right.

[Christiansen (happylinux)]

I'm affected by this bug on Lucid 10.04.1 and Maverick beta 3, no plymouth bootsplash on startup, but it works fine on shutdown. Further more this seems to affect a lot of (all ?) Intel GPU's, and I've experienced this on i855, i915, i945 and i965 mobile GPU's.

BTW. If it could be of any assistance, all boxes works fine with Mint 9.

[Filippo Argiolas (fargiolas)]

Affected too, i915 after the upgrade from 9.10, no plymouth in the initrd, no splash at bootup nor at shutdown.
Reinstalling plymouth doesn't work, update-alternatives --auto default.plymouth says there is no default.plymouth.

Before trying the FRAMEBUFFER=y thing, is that workaround supposed to work? it seems that the issue is not in mode setting or framebuffer, it's plymouth that's not getting loaded at all. Mode is set correctly and there is a nice fading thing from white on black text to gdm with no mode change.

[Avi Kelman (fiendish)]

The FRAMEBUFFER=y thing works for my Thinkpad x201i in 10.10rc. Prior to that, I had no /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash file and no entries for plymouth in initrd. Now I do. I guess the one causes the other. Like #10, I also have the "nothing but a black screen and a flashing cursor" situation between my thinkpad screen and plymouth.

[NGAGE13 (ngage13)]

ubuntu 10.10 and 10.04 32bit
intel gpu
when ubuntu starting i see black screen.than I see plymouth for few second ind than login to gnome.
#9 help me.

[Id2ndR (id2ndr)]

@NGAGE13 : this is the "normal" current behavior. Plymouth is not shown before udevadm has ended which takes seconds (on my computer).

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Perchance is this bug related to bug 561802?

[jhfhlkjlj (fdsuufijjejejejej-deactivatedaccount)]

Shoot, wrong bug report. Pardon the noise.

[Scott Palmer (skewty)]

I believe I am having the same issue with Natty 11.04 (all updates) running the NVidia proprietary driver.

I was getting a flash of the Ubuntu logo an instant before GDM, but since doing

echo FRAMEBUFFER=y >>/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splash
update-initramfs -u

I don't even get that. I get a flash of textmode screen.

This is a Dell E6510

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The submitter of the original bug indicated that this was fixed for him following an update-alternatives call, and that this was probably a bug in a prerelease version of 10.04 LTS. As such, I'm closing this bug report as fixed.

Others who have encountered other problems with text displaying on boot should file separate bug reports for their issues using 'ubuntu-bug plymouth'.