gdm/x fails to start with error "Broken Pipe" at boot in Xubuntu

After speaking with crimsun in #ubuntu+1 he politely pointed it that it could be driver issue.. looking at the binary hints some more, I tend to think he's right since dkms is not present as well as the listing in "GLXinfo" being absent. This issue may be more correctly filed under either the kernel package or xserver-xorg-video-intel. What I intend to do tomorrow is run some traces on x, mesa and the intel driver and perhaps rebuild them and check it out that way.

I'd love to know what the status of this bug is so I can either prepare to run some traces, etc for the developers and whatnot or if it's even going to be assigned.

Please let me know what more I need to supply you guys with.

Thanks,

Matt

After more talking in #ubuntu+1 it was recommended that I remove Plymouth and see what happens... So I removed plymouth and sure enough, the system now correctly boots. I'm not sure what the significance is and if it is Plymouth's interaction with gdm, Xorg or the intel drivers that is causing this to happen, but it does appear that it is plymouth causing this issue and not the drivers in and of themselves. I don't know how you guys what to handle this bug, but for me, it seems pretty clear what the cause is and also what the solution is.

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here.

Having followed many of the conversations on #ubuntu+1, this bug is not limited to any particular video setup. It appears in systems using Intel, Nvidia, and ATI video cards. The message is harder to see on fast systems, but the garbled GDM screen and freezes are visible on all systems.

Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

There are bugs that appear on each of ATI, Nvidia, and Intel cards. There is not yet enough information to conclude that they're the same bug..

In particular, this is the only report of a "broken pipe" error that I've seen so far.

Steve,

So my assumption that the problem that occurred on the Xubuntu Live CD
(Casper) was not the same issue that I had? It would have made sense to
me that this would have been either the same or a related bug.

On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 19:38 +0000, Steve Langasek wrote:
> In particular, this is the only report of a "broken pipe" error that
> I've seen so far.
>

Same problem here on a fresh install of Ubuntu Lucid Alpha 3 (all updates applied), using an ATI card (ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M] [1002:5975] Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01f5]).
The error I get is:

init: ureadahead-other main process (721) terminated with status 4
init: ureadahead-other main process (732) terminated with status 4
could not write bytes: Broken pipe

After just pressing the return key, gdm starts and I can log in normally without problems. This happens every time I boot.

Maybe I should mention, that I do already see a mouse pointer at this point, when the error appears and gdm doesn't start.

I think the problem has to do with ureadahead. if you install something that changes the boot process, first boot will succeed. Second boot will fail. Try installing bootchart and reboot.

i attached the bootchart of the successful boot.

and the bootchart of the failed boot (next boot)

Yes, I can confirm that at the first boot after the install of a new kernel, I do see gdm without an error. Starting from the second boot, the error appears again. So +1 that it is related to ureadahead.

any fix or workaround to this bug ? its annoying , ideas please

Last few reboots gdm starts and i'm able to select my user and type my password. But when i press enter, gdm restarts and i have to re-enter my password.

Seeing this same behavior at boot with Intel graphics and vanilla Ubuntu Lucid. Is there a separate bug that is not Xubuntu-specific I should be following?

That the behavior changes across reboots doesn't mean that it's a ureadahead bug, only that the behavior is racy.

Plymouth is known to have a number of race condition bugs currently.

A fix for these is expected to land in lucid within the next day; please wait for the next upload and retest then.

I have this bug with Ubuntu (not xubuntu)
and this is terrible, waiting for fix,,,,,,,,

This bug was fixed in the package plymouth - 0.8.0~-13

---------------
plymouth (0.8.0~-13) lucid; urgency=low

  [ Steve Langasek ]
  * Don't attach /proc/cmdline to apport reports, this is already in the
    standard info that gets collected...

  [ Alberto Milone ]
  * ubuntu_logo theme:
    - New logo from Otto Greenslade.
    - Switch off dots starting from the ones on the left instead of
      switching them off all at once.

  [ Scott James Remnant ]
  * Move the Ubuntu logo up as discussed with Otto, this makes the mouse
    cursor appear between the logo and dots and solves the optical illusion
    of the logo being too low. LP: #535014.
  * Don't include message about disk checks, which can come from mountall.
  * Drop the rc script splash functions, we don't want the SysV-rc compat
    stuff messing around with the splash screen - this can be entirely
    managed by Upstart now. LP: #528787, #537262.

  * Plymouth Fix Mega Patch:
    - This hasn't yet been broken up into enough bits to send upstream, and
      doesn't *quite* address all the issues yet, but it's a major step.

    - Rewrite the VT handling, rather than abusing /dev/tty0 keep all VT
      operations on the actual VT (tty7), this avoids issues where we set
      the graphics mode of the wrong VT or put the wrong VT into VT_PROCESS
      mode. LP: #520460, #522598, #526321, #533135
    - Don't attempt VT switch when using non-VT consoles.
    - Make VT mandatory for renderer plugins, so we fallback gracefully to
      text when the console is not a VT. LP: #516825, #527083.
    - Restore VT when finished displaying the splash unless plymouth quit
      is called with --retain-splash. LP: #506297.
    - Activate VT from text and details plugins, rather than haphardly in
      the main code, this means the textual boot is also on VT7.
      LP: #518352, #520122.
    - Add a --has-active-vt command that can let gdm inquire whether it
      should reuse Plymouth's VT; fixes the issue where Plymouth has no
      visible splash screen and X ends up on VT1. LP: #519641, #533572.

    - Don't open terminal device in X11, fixes the issue where X will crash
      when debugging plugins using the X11 renderer.
    - Add --tty option to plymouthd for debugging when X is running and
      thus using an alternate VT.

    - Improve deactivate command so that the terminal is no longer watched
      for keyboard input, session is closed, etc. LP: #528787, #531650.
    - Ignore mode changes while deactivated, otherwise we can end up
      resetting the VT back into text mode while X is starting up.
      LP: #523788, #502509.

    - Fix races with simultaneous quit and deactivate commands, or multiples
      of those commands.
    - Ignore --show-splash, --hide-splash, etc. commands while deactivated.
    - Add reactivate command for testing purposes.

    - Don't scan out drm buffer contents to fbcon when not called with
      quit --retain-splash. LP: #527180.

    - Avoid resetting the terminal to unbuffered mode on every write, this
      results in setting X's VT into raw mode and results in the X server
      crashing on key presses. LP: #532047, #534861, #519460, #520...

I've got this problem trying to boot using Ubuntu Alpha 3 live cd. If it's fixed I am waiting for Beta 1 to try.

Its "fixed" in that the current version of Plymouth will dump you to a text login screen, from which you can switch to a real desktop if you know the function keystroke for it. The fix for that is milestoned for beta 2.

I would counsel you to echo $LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH

And see if it set to the
LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/fglrx/dri
while those drivers are uninstalled. This has been happening to me for no reason i can discern (after deactivating the drivers in jockey, and even uninstalling fglrx and fglrx-modaliases).

The comment above is wrong. The problem exists and is a real bug (search for jockey and LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH) but is unrelated.

I've the same problem

I have this on Kubuntu also. I can't see the bootsplash on startup, only on shutdown.
However, KDM starts fine and I'm able to boot.
Currently, the problem is just aesthetic.

One more thing. This specific laptop on which it is happening, I do not really need for much. I can log in to terminal via Ctrl-Alt-F1 and run scripts, or otherwise do anything.

I am not in the least stressed out by what is happening, and would love to help tracking down this bug.

i