Flight 4 Live-CD usage report

[Andreas Schildbach]

Matt Zimmerman wrote:

>>- during bootup, the screen mode switches between text (about 5 
>>seconds), then graphical usplash (about 40 seconds), then text again 
>>(about 1 minute).
> 
> That last change is probably indicative of a bug; watch to see which service
> was starting up at that time and why it took longer than expected.  It is a
> safety feature of usplash that if the boot process does not go as expected,
> it reverts to text mode.

What is the definition of "expected"? Is "switch to text mode" triggered 
by output to stderr? If so, shouldn't the error message appear at the 
very top of the textmode screen? It does not, in my case. Instead, the 
cursor sits blinking for 40 seconds, displaying no text at all. The CD 
drive even shuts off, because if inactivity. The first message that 
appears looks harmless: "* Preparing restricted drivers...".

However, some errors appeared then. On my last boot, the last even was 
fatal: "Unable to handle kernel paging request" 
(https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/32023).

> There is no way to avoid the initial change from text to graphics; PC video
> cards start in text mode and this is beyond the control of the operating
> system.

Isn't the graphical boot loader already graphical? Why is it needed to 
switch to text mode between the graphical boot loader and (graphical) 
usplash. Is it maybe because of 
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/kernel-package/+bug/26521 ?

>>- Keyboard and Timezone were not set correctly.
> 
> The graphical boot menu lets you adjust these.

Where? I could select language, VGA mode and accessibility options, but 
I did not find a way to change keymap and timezone (via menu; I don't 
know about kernel options).

Regards,

Andreas