Xsplash can't be initialized correctly (lucid a3)

[Jan]

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid Lynx) Alpha 3 / PC (Intel x86) desktop CD with the latest updates on an IBM Thinkpad R51 1830-WAY

After grub I just have a black screen with a blinking cursor for a few seconds. Than the screen flickers a few times and I see a screen with plain text:

                                                                             Ubuntu 10.04
                                                                                . . . .
expected behavior: something like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOJUY35N-pU

[Cody Russell (bratsche)]

That sounds like it may be Plymouth, because I had a similar issue for quite a long time that was just fixed a few days ago.

Not an xsplash bug though.

[Jan (jan-timo-henrich-deactivatedaccount)]

@ Cody - Plymouth was updated just today, but the problem still remains and 'sound like' is a bit too little evidence to set this bug to invalid, don't you think?

Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bWrT6I-g_U

[Cody Russell (bratsche)]

No, I really don't. This bug has nothing to do with xsplash. If you want to try to file it against Plymouth, just add Plymouth to the bug report but don't keep setting the bug to New on xsplash please.

[Jan (jan-timo-henrich-deactivatedaccount)]

Well, I still don't understand, how this bug should have nothing to do with Xsplash but with Plymouth, when Scott James Remnant explains in his blog, why you have decided to use Xsplash and not Plymoth. But well, in fact I don't have to understand that and I might have overlooked something here.

http://www.netsplit.com/2009/09/02/making-a-splash/

[Cody Russell (bratsche)]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the problem. I saw something about a blinking cursor which made me think of an issue we were having in Plymouth for awhile. Are you have an actual problem in startup, or are you just not seeing xsplash?

Open up the following two files:

/etc/gdm/Init/Default
/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default

Whatever xsplash stuff was there should currently be commented out, as we have xsplash disabled in Lucid at the moment. This is intentional. I'm not sure if the plans are to change it or not, but I don't think this is a bug.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

On Wed, 2010-03-17 at 20:24 +0000, Jan wrote:

> Well, I still don't understand, how this bug should have nothing to do
> with Xsplash but with Plymouth, when Scott James Remnant explains in his
> blog, why you have decided to use Xsplash and not Plymoth. But well, in
> fact I don't have to understand that and I might have overlooked
> something here.
>
> http://www.netsplit.com/2009/09/02/making-a-splash/
>
Actually that blog is just about why we decided to write xsplash, and is
like a year old already! We kept usplash instead of switching to
Plymouth because we feared it would be a difficult amount of work to
switch.

We're using Plymouth now ;-)

(and we were write, it's proving a very difficult amount of work to
switch!)

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

[Jan (jan-timo-henrich-deactivatedaccount)]

@ Scott and Cody - you're right, the xsplash stuff is commented out

   #if [ -x '/usr/bin/xsplash' ];
   #then
   # /usr/bin/xsplash --gdm-session --daemon
   #fi

and

   #if [ -x '/usr/bin/xsplash' ];
   #then
   # /usr/bin/xsplash --daemon
   #fi

I finally removed the packages

   plymouth 0.8.0~-16 and
   plymouth-x11 0.8.0~-16

in synaptic and rebooted. The result is, that the 'Ubuntu 10.04' plain text placeholder for the graphical boot animation and logger is gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIWzXDqUfEE

Well, when it's not xsplash but plymouth also is invalid, than what's the matter? Anyway, keep up the good work! ;-)

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Nothing's wrong - you described expected behaviour; I don't know why you've removed the plymouth packages

[Jan (jan-timo-henrich-deactivatedaccount)]

@ Scott - I just removed the packages temporarily to see what effect this will have to my unexpected plain text screen saying (see my first video in comments 2)

                                                            Ubuntu 10.04
                                                               . . . .

As I just said, the plain text screen was gone (see my second video in comments 7). Of course, the blinking-cursor-thing still is there.

> I saw something about a blinking cursor which made me think of an issue we were having in Plymouth for awhile.

So I guess, Cody is right to blame it on plymouth. Maybe the ubuntu-plymouth-theme is broken or something like that. I don't know.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

On Thu, 2010-03-18 at 13:28 +0000, Jan wrote:

> @ Scott - I just removed the packages temporarily to see what effect
> this will have to my unexpected plain text screen saying (see my first
> video in comments 2)
>
I've looked at this video, and cannot see anything wrong?

Perhaps it would help if you could explain what you were *expecting* to
see?

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>

[Jan (jan-timo-henrich-deactivatedaccount)]

@ Scott:

expected behavior: a graphical boot animation (please see the bug description) maybe with the new ubuntu-logo:

http://www.heise.de/open/imgs/10/4/9/3/7/5/0/ubuntulogo10.04-600x158-89e9624da80b3150.png

the issue I have: a non-graphical boot animation with a plain text saying Ubuntu 10.04

Anyway, looks like I'm the only one with this issue and I really have wasted enough of your time on this. :-)

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

On Thu, 2010-03-18 at 21:26 +0000, Jan wrote:

> expected behavior: a graphical boot animation (please see the bug
> description) maybe with the new ubuntu-logo:
>
It is not possible to provide a graphical boot-animation on your
hardware, this is generally because you've installed binary drivers such
as nvidia-glx.

We have a plan before Beta 2 to at least provide you with a 16-color
version of the graphical splash, instead of the text version, but we
wanted more test coverage of the text version for Beta 1 since it's the
ultimate fallback.

Scott
--
Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>