Dropping into text mode during boot

[Matt Harrison]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 2009/10/13 Chris G <cl at isbd.net>:
>> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 09:24:14PM +0100, Colin Law wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I noticed the other day that one of my machines, running Jaunty
>>> standard install and all up to date, is dropping into text mode during
>>> boot.  It starts ok with the oscillating yellow blob on the orange
>>> line but then drops into text mode, with the first line showing "*
>>> Reading files needed to boot".  It carries on showing loads of stuff
>>> then displays the graphical login screen and behaves perfectly
>>> thereafter.  I don't remember doing anything other than routine
>>> updates.
>>>
>>> I have googled and found nothing that seemed to correspond to my
>>> problem (I did find a suggestion that this could happen if the swap
>>> partition uuid was not the same in fstab and initramfs resume file,
>>> but I have checked and these are ok).
>>>
>>> I have looked in various log files but cannot see anything untoward,
>>> but to be honest I am not sure what I am looking for (or where I
>>> should look for that matter).
>>>
>>> Any help would be much appreciated.
>>>
>> Doesn't this happen when something takes a longer time than normal,
>> with the intent of showing you what is delaying the boot.
>
> I think you may be right, I have just looked more carefully at another
> machine and it does not show the oscillating yellow blob at all.  On
> the failing machine it shows for maybe 5 seconds before dropping into
> text mode.  Presumably then something is waiting during those seconds.
>  Any idea where to look to find out what is causing it?
>
> Colin
>
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Just out of curiosity, what filesystem do you use?  I know that my
system (ReiserFS) drops to text mode and finishes booting to the
graphical login screen because it is checking the filesystem.