No "stopping" messages shown during shutdown

[Brian Candler]

ubuntu 14.04 server amd64 (running on a Mac Mini FWIW)

During shutdown, no messages are displayed as daemons are being stopped. This makes it almost impossible to debug problems where a daemon is causing the shutdown to freeze.

How to demonstrate:

(1) Ctrl-F7 to show the virtual console where the bootup messages are. The last message seen is:
"* Stopping System V runlevel compatibility"

(2) Ctrl-F1 to get back to first virtual console.

(3) Add a divider to the bootup messages:

echo "---" >/dev/tty7

(4) "sudo reboot"

The console switches to VC7, but in general, no further messages are displayed after the divider. Exception: when I have NFS packages installed, I do see
* rpcbind terminating on signal. Restart with "rpcbind -w"

but that's it.

The only way I've been able to find out what's causing the system to hang at shutdown is to reinstall the system from scratch and keep adding packages until I find the one causing the problem. (Specifically it turned out to be avahi-daemon, but that's the subject of a separate bug report)

At http://upstart.ubuntu.com/wiki/Debugging it says you can run "initctl events" to see what's happening, but that command-line option is not supported in the Upstart included in Ubuntu 14.04.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: upstart 1.12.1-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-30.55-generic 3.13.11.2
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-30-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Jul 16 17:11:16 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-07-16 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140416.2)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdline: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.13.0-30-generic.efi.signed root=/dev/mapper/hostname--vg-root ro
SourcePackage: upstart
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UpstartBugCategory: System
UpstartRunningSystemVersion: init (upstart 1.12.1)
modified.conffile..etc.dhcp.dhcpd.conf: [modified]
modified.conffile..etc.modprobe.d.blacklist.conf: [modified]
modified.conffile..etc.sysctl.conf: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.dhcp.dhcpd.conf: 2014-07-16T17:07:07.863506
mtime.conffile..etc.modprobe.d.blacklist.conf: 2014-07-16T16:26:11.252552
mtime.conffile..etc.sysctl.conf: 2014-07-16T16:22:29.256880

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Alex Popovskiy (alex-popovskiy)]

I found a way to bring that shutdown messages back by disabling /etc/init/plymouth-shutdown.conf (echo "manual" >> /etc/init/plymouth-shutdown.override)

[Brian Candler (b-candler)]

Workaround confirmed: console stays on tty1, and the shutdown messages are shown there. Thank you!