[PLUG] startup problems

[Daniel Herrington]

On 07/26/2010 07:15 AM, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 6:46 AM, MJang<mike at linuxexam.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>> On Sun, 2010-07-25 at 14:47 -0700, Denis Heidtmann wrote:
>>      
>>> I reported here some time ago random failures to complete starting of my
>>> Ubuntu 10.04 system.  Power off and power on usually results in what
>>>        
>> looks
>>      
>>> like a normal start.  Three time now Cups has failed to start on boot.  I
>>> have found an interesting discussion of the Cups problem.  See
>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/554172.    Of
>>> particular interest is comment #73 and subsequent.  It seems very likely
>>> that both intermittent  problems I have observed (and perhaps some I have
>>> not observed!) are of the same origin.
>>>
>>> One question I have is, where to go from here?  The cups issue was first
>>> mentioned in April; the last comment was hours ago.  It has been marked
>>> "Critical" for one month.  Are there other places to look for a fix?  May
>>>        
>> I
>>      
>>> assume that the problem is deep down in the system, and an update will be
>>> forthcoming "real soon now"?  I note a bunch of workarounds reported, but
>>> not understanding them makes me concerned that they may break something
>>> worse.
>>>        
>> Dear Denis,
>>
>> When I've had similar problems, and did not want to get into the
>> internals, my workaround has been to use the /etc/rc.local file. You
>> should be able to include additional commands in that file -- which are
>> run after the services in the default runlevel are started. In this
>> case, that's the services in the /etc/rc.2/ directory.
>>
>> In your case, I'd try including the following command in the
>> noted /etc/rc.local file, before the "exit 0"
>>
>> /etc/init.d/cups start
>>
>> The /etc/rc.local file is sort of like a band-aid; once the bug is
>> fixed, you'll be able to remove the /etc/init.d/cups start command from
>> the noted file.
>>
>> FWIW, CUPS is ok on my My e1405 laptop with 10.04 32-bit.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>>      
>
> That is certainly reasonable.  Cups' failure to start has happened rarely
> enough that manual invocation of  /etc/init.d/cups start is easy enough.  On
> your system, you might want to check on what runlevel reports on your
> system.  When cups fails to start runlevel reports "unknown".  This bug may
> well be affecting more than one or two services.  It would be interesting to
> see if on some systems runlevel reports "unknown" even when no other
> symptoms are observed.  Since I use the printer only occasionally, there may
> be many times the error goes unnoticed on my system.  The real issue for me
> is that this bug is likely responsible for my system failing to start (
> approx. a 20% failure rate).
>
> -Denis
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>    
Denis,

I've been running 10.04 on my laptop since end of last week. I'm only 
rebooting once every 2-3 days though. I'm not seeing any system start up 
failures on a Dell XPS M1330.

Can you force the start up output rather to screen rather than going 
into the ubuntu splash? I've never tried on ubuntu, but I know in RH and 
CentOS you can hit f2 or something to get the boot output. You might be 
able to catch where the hang is.

-- 
Daniel B. Herrington
Director of Field Services
Robert Mark Technologies
dherrington at robertmarktechnologies.com
o:  651-769-2574
ho: 503-419-6464
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