upstart hangs at udev unknown key errors

[Lou Ruppert]

Binary package hint: upstart

After the updates that broke mountall last night, my pxe boot workstation hangs during boot with the following messages:

udevd[959]: unknown key 'SYMLINK{unique}' in /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules:3
udevd[959]: unknown key 'SYMLINK{unique}' in /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules:4

It still responds to ctrl-alt-delete, so the system isn't hung, but startup seems to be waiting for an event that will never happen during the normal startup. I've applied the updates all morning, rebooting and regenerating initrds from the chroot on the server, but the situation persists. I have no diskless workstation. :(

I don't know how to debug this further, as upstart doesn't proceed linearly like sysvinit does, and my diskless setup precludes my appending the init=/bin/sh argument like a normal machine would take.

[Hilario J. Montoliu (hjmf) (hmontoliu)]

This is the same problem reported in bug https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/430272 who someone marked as dup of an unrelated bug (IMHO)

If you boot in single the boot stops after init-bottom

You can press ctrl-alt-supr and reboot so the system isn't hang

I've been updating all updates since last night booting as init=/bin/bash but the issue isn't fixed yet so it is still a problem

[Lou Ruppert (louferd)]

Yeah, I think only one of the symptoms in that bug was a duplicate, and the rest was still unresolved, so I created this one to continue the issue, since I don't know how to override someone else's 'Duplicate' branding.

[manwe (nettibug+launchpad)]

Just ran latest updates and though there was some initscript stuff it did not help.

Logging in to the system using init=/bin/bash I was able to run some tests and running /etc/init.d/udev start causes the system to hang in a similar fashion as with normal boot.

I have boot on /dev/sda2 and my root on a LVM2 partition. Also this is asus laptop with intel graphics card.
(I'm also seeing drm_fill_in and agpgart problems with boot)

I also ran a test with removing and purging udev and then reinstalling it (same for upstart) but no help there.

Here's my "get system to pkginstall state"-script so that you can run screen when starting aptitude
#!/bin/bash
mount -orw,remount /
mkdir /dev/pts
mount /boot
mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts

Any ideas appreciated..
Cheers,
   Manwe

[manwe (nettibug+launchpad)]

Just to reply to my earlier comment
instruction from here fixed my DRM: problem

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/430694

intel_agp

and udev does not hang my system (I think it was two unrelated problems and the other one is fixed, but not the blank screen hang. (ctrl+alt+del works)

Cheers,
   Manwe

[manwe (nettibug+launchpad)]

Ach,

I meant to sent tty8.conf with comments.. Anyway put it into

/etc/init/ (using livecd or some other means)

that is the only way I can get console (in tty8 = alt+F8) and upstart init running.

After I manually start everything from /etc/rcS.d and rc2.d and take care of mounts (like home) I have a usable system.
For some reason some of the upgreades messed up upstart thing and none of the upgrades to date have fixed it.
It has to do something with upstart and maybe something in the conversion process. Anyway if I have --debug in grub boot config (just after "ro ") I can see that upstart starts and stops udevmonitor and then just stops.

running 'runlevel' gives me unknown

Also to compat "blank screen" problem I have to use i915.modeset=0 (even though it complains) to see whats going on. if I then (after boot) remove i915 and install it with modeset=1
I have to start X to get console back to normal

I hope this helps others...

Cheers,
   Manwe

ps. I thing all those duplicate bugs are related both there are multiple issues here and not all of them have been fixed. Unfortunately they hit as at the same time

[manwe (nettibug+launchpad)]

I ran aptitude update + upgrade on "Mon 28.9.2009 "
and the hang problem is fixed (I did not check what were the packages that got updates)

Now I'm able to boot normally, login to X and receive quite many warnings of something or other running, but those are just normal alpha release pains.

Thanks for devs for fixing this. (at least for me)

Cheers,
 Manwe