Console text boot instead of usplash

[Mahesh Asolkar]

Binary package hint: usplash

I am using up-to-date Hardy Heron on my desktop built on Asus P5K-E/Wifi motherboard and an Nvidia G8400GS graphics card. My display is a 22" Acer widescreen flat panel (1680x1050).

Usually when Ubuntu boots, it shows a splash screen where the progress bar goes back and forth between left and right. Then at one point, the progress bar starts to show boot progress, where it grows from left to right.

In the past few days, I've noticed that first part of the splash works fine. Then instead of the splash screen showing boot progress, I see the console text booting.

Then Ubuntu boots fine.

What causes this? How can I fix it?

Update : Might be the same issue as bug 205990

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Thanks for your bug report. In order to help that bug getting fixed, can you provide the following informations?

1. Attach your /boot/grub/menu.lst
2. Copy the result of that command in a terminal : uname -a

There is a recent regression that causes this issue with some framebuffers, if you use "vga=*" in your actual grub menu.lst file, please remove it and look if it fixes your issue. Also, please install all updates, specially for libx86 which fix a serious bug with recent nvidia cards and usplash. Thanks for keeping active with your bug report.

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

Hi Saïvann,

Here is the output of 'uname -a'

  Linux reservoir 2.6.24-12-generic #1 SMP Wed Mar 12 23:01:54 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Also attached is my current menu.lst file. It does have vga=* on the boot line. I tried to remove it like you suggested, but then I would get the normal text progress, showing different packages being loaded and their status [ok]/[fail].

My system is all up-to-date as of now. I still have the dancing cursors after the initial splash screen.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Thank your for your fast answer.

The blinking cursor bug is a duplicate of bug 201591 and is caused by a recent regression with latest ubuntu kernel and vesafb. However, before I mark this bug as a duplicate, can you remove vga=795 from your /boot/grub/menu.lst file and test if usplash works correctly without vesafb?

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

I understood the part where I remove the 'vga=795' and try again. I don't quite understand how to test 'without vesafb' - just the limits of my linux knowledge :) Could you elaborate on how exactly I do that?

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Of course :) In fact, if your remove "vga=795" from your /boot/grub/menu.lst, ubuntu won't load vesafb so you don't need to do anything else (unless you modified /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-framebuffer by yourself)

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

I tried to remove vga=795 altogether from the boot line, but then I get the normal text progress, showing different packages being loaded and their status [ok]/[fail]. There is no splash screen with the progress bar.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Thanks for these informations. I suspect that the ubuntu linux kernel show some important messages, so usplash stop and the rest of the boot time is in the console. To help finding the cause of this, can you attach the individual files created by these commands in a terminal ? (You can find these files in your home folder once you copied these commands in the terminal).

sudo lspci -vvnn > ~/lspci.log
cat /etc/usplash.conf > ~/usplash.conf
dmesg > ~/dmesg.log

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

Here are the attachements...

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

I would like to add that the splash screen when shutting down the machine always works well. The progress bar included. HTH.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

This bug really sounds like bug 205990, I don't know yet what is the cause. At least now this bug report contains necessary information for a developer to look deeper into the problem. Thanks for the time you spent so far on this bug report.

[ktulu77 (ktulu-highwaytoacdc)]

I think it is a problem with non ext3 fs because I have this problem with ReiserFS root partition.
I was looking for some blueprints and I have found this : https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/partition-management
and it is written : "fsck usplash integration is in hardy now, except for checkroot.sh (which breaks with non-ext3, investigation in progress)"
Perhaps it has something to do with this bug.

[Igor Cota (igor-cota)]

I'm experiencing the same bug and my root partition is EXT3, so it's probably not that...

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

All my Linux partitions are ext3 too. There was an NTFS partition that had error when mounting because its GUID in fstab was incorrect. I've corrected it since, but the problem with usplash persists.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Since the two bugs really describe the same issue, I set this bug report as a duplicate of bug 205990

[Igor Cota (igor-cota)]

It seems that usplash actually segfaults and exits with "error 6" when booting, you can see it if you remove "quiet" from your boot.lst. It's the first thing written after the splash disappears...

[Mathijs Dumon (zandmathijsje)]

Adding my two cents with: ME TOO!

The exact error produced is:
[ 38.996776] usplash[1238]: segfault at b76fc2c0 eip b7eeef19 esp bfdb8c90 error 6

I have the 2.6.24-16-generic kernel and an nVidia graphics card using the nvidia-glx-new driver
I'm also loading a NTFS partition (my external hard drive) so perhaps it is related to non ext3-fs, however there's nothing critical stored on this disk!

greetz,
Mat

[Mathijs Dumon (zandmathijsje)]

Actually after having a close look at my dmesg.log file:

[ 37.330337] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access ST916082 1A 0000 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[ 37.335579] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 312581808 512-byte hardware sectors (160042 MB)
[ 37.337574] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 37.337578] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
[ 37.337581] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 37.341562] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 312581808 512-byte hardware sectors (160042 MB)
[ 37.343558] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 37.343560] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 27 00 00 00
[ 37.343562] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[ 37.343565] sdb: sdb1
[ 37.394852] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[ 37.394883] sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
[ 38.996776] usplash[1238]: segfault at b76fc2c0 eip b7eeef19 esp bfdb8c90 error 6

I noticed that the crash appears right after the NTFS disk is loaded. I'm going to try to boot without the external disk attached and see what happens!

Mat

[da_rokk (da-rokk)]

Hi there

I also have this error, splash boot screen up to a point and then goes into console.

This happened exactly after I used GParted to remove a NTFS partition and then created a ext3 in its place. My /etc/fstab and dmesg is below.

hope this helps others

- - -- - - - - - - - /etc/fstab - - - -- - - - -
# /dev/sda2
#UUID=90F4DCEFF4DCD914 /mnt/Ddrive ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/sda2 /mnt/Ddrive ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

 -- - -- - - -- - dmesg - - - -- - - - - -
usplash[1244]: segfault at b76ed580 eip b7f32ed2 esp bfbbc290 error 6

[Mahesh Asolkar (asolkar)]

I recently moved my /home to a different partition. This also involved re-structuring the disk with Gparted, and it also resulted in UUID of my swap changing. I had lost the usplash as well. I followed the following steps outlined at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/205990 to recover the usplash:

1. Make sure you have the initramfs-tools update
2. sudo blkid
3. Check that swap line UUID from /etc/fstab matches swap UUID from step 2, if not change fstab.
4. Check that the UUID in /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume matches the swap UUID from step 2, if not change resume file.
5. sudo update-initramfs -u
6. Restart

I've come to learn that every time you do restructure the disk (make/remove partitions, install XP etc.), UUID of the swap partition changes, that messes up usplash. For me, the above steps have always restored usplash.

Shouldn't there be something in the system that recognizes this mismatch in swap UUIDs in the resume file, the fstab file and try to restore it?

[falstaff (falstaff)]

I had this segfault error with usplash too. I changed my Harddrive to a bigger one, an 320GB, an placed the swap at the end of the harddrive! I could not use the swapspace (swapon /dev/sda8 didn't work). After reading Mahesh Asolkar's post, I tried to "repair" my swap, recreated the partition and did some other things, but it didn't worked, usplash has segfault and swapspace was not usable. In the end I deleted my swapspace partition (remove the swap entry in fstab was NOT enougth)! Now, I have no swap but a working usplash! :-) Is there a limit using swapspace beyond 120 GB?

[Billi S (billi-shere)]

THANK YOU!!! Mahesh Asolkar's post worked perfectly!! I now have a Splash screen! BTW in my case...I had installed opensuse kde 4.2 beta on a separate partition and lost the grub boatloader...after using the ubuntu live cd to install configure and install grub back to the way it was..i found myself booting into ubuntu but without this segfault error and no splash screen thereafter...similar to others above shutdown splash screen worked perfectly!

[teacher006 (terry-dean)]

I just used Mahesh Asolkar's directions but I don"t have a swap file and it worked.I had recently reinstalled my grub because I installed Linux Mint 6.0 on another partition and it coud not find all of my systems on my laptop.

I have Ubuntu 8.10, oepenGEU 8.10, Linux Mint 6.0 and Windows XP PRO. Anyways, I did have to do one more thing before it worked and that was open up "startup manager" and select ubuntu-usplash and after it configured for a few seconds I restarted and "BINGO" my splash screen was back, not only that but many others are working if I select them in startup-manager, like kubuntu and ustudio. So many thanks to the people that have posted here. Hope what I added will maybe help someone else.