Dell Latitude E5420 doesn't boot if killswitch is turned to "radio off"

[Daniel Holbach]

Ubuntu 12.04.3, Dell E5420.
Boots fine with killswitch to "radio on".

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

<cyphermox> this looks like something is stuck in the boot, the device does boot file but some upstart job appears stuck
<cyphermox> I see NM didn't even get fired, anyway, that I can notice

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Hi Daniel - A couple of initial questions...

1) Has this problem just started? If so, what changed?

2) How far into the boot does it get?

Can you try removing "splash" and "quiet" from the boot command-line. Also, you could try copying tty8.conf from http://people.canonical.com/~jhunt/upstart/conf/tty8.conf to /etc/init/tty8.conf. Depending on plymouth, this may let you login via control-alt-f8. If so, please run "apport-collect 1256949" (you may need to manually "sudo start ssh"?).

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

1) It's a fresh 12.04.3 install.
2) See the attached syslog files. It appears to get stuck some time during the network bits.

Rouven: can you try what James suggested in the comment above?

[Rouven Sacha (rouvensacha)]

Hey James & Daniel,

thanks for the quick response!

The boot behaviour doesn't change unfortunately, if i switch off "splash" and "quiet" at the grub cmd line.

See "screenshot" attached

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Hi Rouven - thanks for the screenshot. No signs of failures there.

Please can you try a couple of things:

1) Let the system boot as far as it can, then try pressing control+alt+F7 to see if this switches to the greeter to allow you to login normally.

2) Please try installing the tty8.conf job as described in comment #6 - we really need the information that either a login shell or apport-collect can provide us to help debug this further.

[meamy (hans13evi)]

Hi James

we tryed both things but they didnt worked. It is unpredictabel how fare upstarts boots but out of 10 trys it never
came to the point were it starts the ttys. Unfortunatly I did not finde any way to configure upstart that way that it trys to start the ttys as early as possible.
We tryed to boot without appamor (disabled with grub cmd line) since in a couple of reboots that was the point were upstart hangs, also we removed the modem-manager for the same reason, but the behaivor doesnt changed.

Maybe you can tell me a way how to start the ttys early so that We will get a Bash?

hannes

for blinkenlichten

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

@meamy - In comment #6, I explain how to start a tty extremely early. Please try this and let me know what happens.

[meamy (hans13evi)]

@james I did that but it never startet (or to be 100% correct I could never reach it with crtl+alt+f8), the startup behaivor didnt changed from what i cloud see (the point where it stops on every reboot is always a bit diffrent).

Unfortunatly at the moment all Laptops are with our coustomers but I thing around next Week I could get one on my deskt for debbuging. Since obviously syslogd is startet I would try to start the tty8 in direct dependencie to this service and see if i can get anything, the other option, I have in mind, is to put dropbear in to the initramfs and conncet to it and gather some usefull information there. Do you think it possible/usefull to put apport-collect into to initramfs, or did that not make any sence ( I'm not familar with how apport works).

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

@meamy - I don't think putting apport/dropbear into the initramfs is a good idea, no. Please can you boot without 'quiet' and without 'splash' but add '--debug' and attach a photo of the screen.

What do you mean that you could never reach the login screen with crtl+alt+f8?:

1) Did the system fail to switch to vt8?
2) Did the system correctly switch to vt8 but not display a login prompt?

If you are comfortable doing so, I would recommend booting again without 'splash' and without 'quiet' and adding 'init=/bin/sh'. Then, once you have been dropped to a shell:

# /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty8 &
# exec /sbin/init --debug </dev/console >/dev/console 2>&1

At that point, upstart will start to boot the system. Again, pleas try switching to vt8 with ctrl+alt+f8 and see if you can login and run apport-collec.

[meamy (hans13evi)]

@james

Ok i got the shell (/bin/sh) and was able to start getty (/sbin/getty -8 38400 tty8 &)and to switch to tty8 (I was not able to login, but i guess thats correct).
after I enter your second command the init process starts as usal and after a while the system freeze (meaning i could no longer switch to the tty8) , so i was not able do run apport-collec. So for your question answer 1 is correct.

I add the boot screen again but there is nothing really new (it's still realy random where it freeze so just a cold boot (powerkey pressing for 10s) brings it back to live) expect from the debuging infomation but as ware as i can see there are all normal.

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

@meamy - ok, I am starting to suspect this is either a kernel or graphics card issue. Adding linux to bug.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1256949

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

At this point, I'd suggest temporarily disabling the network-manager upstart job (which will of course disable networking):

echo manual | sudo tee /etc/init/network-manager.override

Does this give a reliable boot? To undo this change simply delete the override file:

sudo rm /etc/init/network-manager.override

Also, what is the contents of your modules file?:

$ cat /etc/modules

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

@meamy: Please can you try booting again with --debug - your attachment in #14 looks like you booted with --verbose instead?

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Other things to try...

When the system "freezes":

1) Can you still toggle the caps-lock light by pressing the caps-lock key?
2) Can you reboot by holding down *all* of the following keys combos (do all of them):
    alt + sysrq + s
    alt + sysrq + u
    alt + sysrq + b

Also, would it be possible to try re-installing with a 13.10 / 14.04 image to see if the behaviour is different?

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

@meamy: if you boot the machine with the kill switch on and once booted switch it to off does the machine cope with that ok?

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Another thought - can you confirm that this system is being booted without any external devices being plugged into it (ie no extermal mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, etc)?

[meamy (hans13evi)]

ok thanks I will test this as sone as I find some free time (so maybe tomorow)

[meamy (hans13evi)]

Here are the results:

1.The Systems does not react while freezed to
 alt + sysrq + s
 alt + sysrq + u
 alt + sysrq + b
 no led is blinking the caps-lock led is not reacting
2. using the killswitch while running works as you would expect it (wifi and bluetooth
disappear) see the syslog dump
3. There is no external devices expect the power supplie connected and I bootet with –debug in #14 (tried that again and result was the same)

4. after creating /etc/init/network-manager.override the system boots normal, no matter in what position the killswitch is
4.1. after booting with killswitch off, the manual start of the netwok-manager with “sudo service netwok-manager start” will freeze the system completely, unforunatly there is no crash report/syslog entry after a cold reboot.
4.2 booting with killswitch on, starting the network-manager works, then stopping the network-manager, move the killswitch to off, starting the network-manager again will freeze the system. Switching the killswitch while the network-manager is running works as already mentioned above.

so I think that is an network-manager bug

[meamy (hans13evi)]

ok after installing the broadcom-STA-wifi-driver the problem is completly gone. so finaly it turn out to be a driver issue.

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

Sounds like the original driver had caused the kernel to become totally unresponsive. Glad the problem has been resolved for you.

Please could you attach the output of "sudo lshw -c network" to this bug so we can see the details of your broadcom wireless card?

Thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for upstart (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[meamy (hans13evi)]

Is there any update on this Bug?