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

[Barry Drake]

On Fri, 2010-05-07 at 10:28 +0000, arand wrote:
> I do not see that, when downloading the .deb files I get e.g. ~54k for the plymouthd executable, so that sounds like some kind of corruption in the download on your side, I think.

Just tried again from:
https://edge.launchpad.net/~arand/+archive/unstable/+build/1715057 after
deleting the previous packages.  Still cannot install plymouth.  Have
tried in various ways including the gui pachkage manager.  One of the
command I tried gives:
barry at netbook:~/Downloads$ aptitude install -S
plymouth_0.8.2-2ubuntu3~ppa1_i386.deb
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information       
Initialising package states... Error!
E: Unable to parse package file plymouth_0.8.2-2ubuntu3~ppa1_i386.deb
(1)

You are right - the plymouthd executable is 54k.  I was tired and
looking at the wrong file.  Sorry.

-- 
fsck progress stalls at boot, plymouthd/mountall eats CPU
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/571707
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Status in “mountall” package in Ubuntu: Triaged
Status in “plymouth” package in Ubuntu: Triaged
Status in “mountall” source package in Lucid: Triaged
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

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