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

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

This bug was fixed in the package mountall - 2.15

---------------
mountall (2.15) lucid-proposed; urgency=low

  [ Scott James Remnant ]
  * Fix an obvious thinko error that meant that the "I"gnore fsck error key
    for a "hard" failure was ignored.
  * When cancelling filesystem checks, only cancel those that are actually
    checking filesystems; otherwise those that are merely verifying the
    superblock will return an "unrecoverable error" rather than "cancelled".
    LP: #577331.

  [ Steve Langasek ]
  * Only send plymouth a progress update when there's actual progress to
    report; otherwise we flood plymouthd with redundant events, and the
    progress will spin for minutes after the fsck itself is finished.  Thanks
    to Tero Mononen and Anders Kaseorg for the patch.  LP: #571707.
 -- Steve Langasek <steve.langasek at ubuntu.com>   Sun, 09 May 2010 01:04:24 +0200

** Changed in: mountall (Ubuntu Lucid)
       Status: Fix Committed => Fix Released

-- 
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: 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 accepted into -proposed. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed.

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