fsck progress counter stalls, plymouthd eats cpu

Binary package hint: plymouth

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 (in my case, around an hour).

WORKAOUNDS

1. Removing "quiet" and "splash" from the kernel boot line

3. When the progress has stalled, switch away from the splash screen using the left arrowkey (presumably any arrowkey works).
This could speed up the boot process to ~1 minute instead.

OBSERVATIONS

The fsck message "somethingsomething non-contiguous somethingsomething" Which I assume indicates the end of the fsck, is printed in the Virtual Terminal (Not-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.

TEST CASE:

(sudo aptitude install bootchart)
sudo touch /forcefsck && sudo reboot

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: plymouth 0.8.2-2ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-21.32-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-21-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat May 1 05:13:50 2010
DefaultPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-logo/ubuntu-logo.plymouth
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20091209)
Lsusb: Error: command ['lsusb'] failed with exit code 1:
MachineType: innotek GmbH VirtualBox
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=c3804ba1-72aa-4d8c-88c3-1bb81f2619f6 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcFB: 0 VGA16 VGA
SourcePackage: plymouth
TextPlymouth: /lib/plymouth/themes/ubuntu-text/ubuntu-text.plymouth
dmi.bios.date: 12/01/2006
dmi.bios.vendor: innotek GmbH
dmi.bios.version: VirtualBox
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvninnotekGmbH:bvrVirtualBox:bd12/01/2006:svninnotekGmbH:pnVirtualBox:pvr1.2:
dmi.product.name: VirtualBox
dmi.product.version: 1.2
dmi.sys.vendor: innotek GmbH