First up, here's a dump of the jobs that you have registered. I've put the names followed by the goal and state in brackets. Then looked at the "cause" and "blocked" parameters, NULL means there wasn't one. Please shout if any of this system state looks unusual to you: rc jobs, all stopped: rcS (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rcS-sulogin (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc0 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc1 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc2 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc3 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc4 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc5 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL rc6 (stop/waiting) NULL NULL This is what I'd expect, the system has booted so there's no runlevel change going on right now. tty jobs, both running: tty1 (start/running) NULL NULL tty2 (start/running) NULL NULL Again, what we'd expect. Now, a bunch of system services, some running, some not: autofs (start/running) NULL NULL acpid (start/running) NULL NULL haldaemon (start/running) NULL NULL messagebus (start/running) NULL NULL netplugd (start/running) NULL NULL prefdm (start/running) NULL NULL rsyslog (start/running) NULL NULL logd (stop/waiting) NULL NULL microcode_ctl (stop/waiting) NULL NULL netfs (stop/waiting) NULL NULL network (stop/waiting) NULL NULL serial (stop/waiting) NULL NULL sshd (stop/waiting) NULL NULL sulogin (stop/waiting) NULL NULL Now your custom bits: some jobs are stopped: ezono-cyclades-calibration (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-pre-start (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_ane (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_ccs (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_emg (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_mco (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_mse (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_par (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_pro (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_ssm (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_upg (stop/waiting) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_xss (stop/waiting) NULL NULL These might be "due to be started", but not yet reached, that's ok - if Upstart hasn't reached them they're not relevant yet. some are running: ezono-cyclades-ac-adapter (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-list-tasks (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-stop-software-control (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-suspend-control (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-xss-control (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-malta-fpga-control (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_bbd (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_cal (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_dso (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_fcl (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_fem (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_emg-control (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_mco-control (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_prd (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_scp (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_smr (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_ssc (start/running) NULL NULL ezono-cyclades-t_upg-control (start/running) NULL NULL These are just running normally, there's no "cause" for them (ie. they're defined as services - I didn't actually verify this, for all of them, but I suspect it's true - if you could make sure that'd be great) Now we also have some running tasks that retain their start cause: ezono-cyclades-gui-start-condition-control (start/running) 0x9a0d9a0 started enzono-cyclades-t_bgr (handling 1) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_bgr (start/running) 0x9a0ec98 restart-bgr (handling 1) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_wdg (start/running) 0x9a0dc68 stopped ezono-cyclades-pre-start ok (handling 1) NULL Some jobs are starting up based on the same event: ezono-cyclades-t_hal (start/pre-start) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_rvs (start/pre-start) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_scv (start/pre-start) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_spl (start/pre-start) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_svs (start/pre-start) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) NULL ezono-cyclades-t_upn (start/pre-start) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) NULL Which all looks ok. And then we have three which are in valid states of starting, but have an invalid pointer for their cause: ezono-cyclades-t_fbs (start/pre-start) 0x9a0eb48 INVALID NULL ezono-cyclades-t_ime (start/pre-start) 0x9a0eb48 INVALID NULL ezono-cyclades-t_ltl (start/spawned) 0x9a0eb48 INVALID NULL ezono-cyclades-usb-storage (start/running) 0x9a0eb48 INVALID NULL It was the third of these (start/spawned) that crashed the daemon, but any of the other two would have crashed it the minute they reached start/spawned. I find it interesting that the fourth one is in start/running In the events list we have: 0x9a0dc68 stopped ezono-cylades-pre-start ok (handling 1) 0x9a0ec98 restart-bgr (handling 1) 0x9a0d9a0 started ezono-cylades-t_bgr (handling 1) 0x9a0e720 start-ezono-cyclades-gui (handling 6) 0x9aa7e20 started ezono-cyclades-t_prd (pending 0) 0x9a0eb20 started ezono-cyclades-t_scp (pending 0) These numbers match up to the others, so other than the mysterious 0x9a0eb48 event, the data has integrity