[Bug 571707] Re: fsck progress stalls at boot, plymouthd/mountall eats CPU

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 06:49:14PM -0000, ingo wrote:
> Steve Langasek (vorlon)  wrote on 2011-10-25:

> > And there are a number of other plymouth bugs present that are higher-impact
> > than this one, so it is unlikely that this bug will receive further
> > attention for 10.04.

> That's true for sure. With this in mind it is definitely a shame that
> Canonical tries to prevent users from un-installing plymouth by
> artificially setting plymouth as dependency for mountall.

It is not an artificial dependency.  *mountall cannot communicate with the
user without plymouth.*  There must be some framework for multiplexing
boot-time I/O in order to let packages like mountall communicate with the
user, and that framework is plymouth.  There aren't even any other
contenders in the field.

And your persistent sniping here about Ubuntu design decisions is an
inappropriate use of the bug system.  Please stop.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to mountall in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/571707

Title:
  fsck progress stalls at boot, plymouthd/mountall eats CPU

Status in The Linux Mint Distribution:
  Fix Released
Status in “mountall” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “plymouth” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “mountall” source package in Lucid:
  Fix Released
Status in “plymouth” source package in Lucid:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  PROBLEM

  When a disk check is performed, the progress stalls somewhere around
  70% and will then take a very long time finishing the remaining
  percent (10 minutes or more).

  PATCH

  Patch for mountall has now been pushed as an update for Lucid, if you
  are still seeing this problem, make sure you have mountall 2.15
  installed before commenting/reporting a new bug.

  [Earlier patch comments:]
  Tero Mononen has published a patch for Bug #553745 which applies to the issue described here as well (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/553745/comments/76 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/553745/comments/77 )

  I have created corresponding packages which are available through my
  PPA: https://launchpad.net/~arand/+archive/unstable

  !!!Do note that this is an unofficial, untested, preliminary patch!!!
  However testing and feedback is welcome, please especially report if there are ANY (new) problems seen when using the patched version.

  TEST CASE:

  (sudo aptitude install bootchart)
  sudo touch /forcefsck && sudo reboot

  POSSIBLE TEMPORARY WORKAROUNDS

  1. Removing "quiet" and "splash" from the kernel boot line

  2. When the progress has stalled, switch away from the splash screen
  using the left arrowkey (presumably any arrowkey works).

  * Both these approaches speeds up the boot process to ~1 minute
  instead.

  OBSERVATIONS

  The fsck message "(...) non-contiguous (...)" Which I assume indicates
  the end of the fsck, is printed in the Virtual Terminal ("outside"
  plymouth) at around 70% + ~10-20 seconds.

  Disk activity is null from this point on (presumed end of fsck above).

  Bootchart crashes if trying to catch the whole boot at once with
  plymouth (at least for my 1h boot).

  This problem seems to occur in both plymouthd and mountall, semi-simultaneously:
  If you are in the plymouth screen, plymouthd is the cpu-gobbler, if you switch away from it using the arrow keys, mountall instead takes over the cpu-eating.

  #####

  ORIGINAL REPORT

  Binary package hint: mountall

  On my system when fsck runs at boot plymouth % completion count goes
  up quickly (<10 seconds) up to about 80% and then slows down
  considerably: the complete fsck of my 125GB HD, 30% full takes more
  than 5 minutes.

  While this goes on the text VTs are all completely blank: just a
  blinking cursor.

  An fsck from a recovery disk completes in ~10 seconds so it doesn't
  look like "fsck just being slow".

  This slowdown was *not* happening on 2010-04-14 with the PPA described
  by this comment:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/554737/comments/25

  The fix in the PPA is now in the mainline lucid but somewhere in
  between then and today (2010-04-29) something introduced this
  slowdown.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
  Package: mountall 2.14
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
  Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: wl
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Thu Apr 29 15:38:56 2010
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100317.1)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_IE:en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_IE.utf8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: mountall

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/571707/+subscriptions