[Bug 1872159] Re: booting with splash hangs when external monitors are connected

[Tim Wetzel]

Sebastien, I'm new to Ubuntu so I may not be looking in the right
place... but I couldn't find much in the logs. There was no crash, no
error, just... nothing. Only option was a forced power down. I could
find the point where I restarted it in the logs, but nothing else seemed
remarkable. And that is all gone now since I subsequently tried to
reload Ubuntu last week, which hit the installer bug.n And at the
moment, that machine is sidelined...

Right now, I'm using my backup laptop, which has also been running 20.04
for a couple months. I have grub set to quiet nosplash which seems to
avoid it. I'm reluctant to try to reproduce this bug because these two
machines both are mission critical. Plus: and this may be important...
the backup is a ThinkPad T440s: immediately after this happened and
forced a hard power down, I started to get ACPI errors every startup.
We're not sure whether this event corrupted the ACPI table or whether it
brought out a latent bug in the T440s BIOS. I have informed Lenovo.

The other machine, the one that is sidelined, is a T570, dual boot with
Win 10, Ubuntu freshly reloaded with much difficulty from the daily
update copy due to bug 1871268. After getting past that installer crash
issue, I was again confronted with initramfs errors (bug 1835660). Since
we're not sure what this boot hang is doing to the BIOS, I turned off
the splash screen hoping that I wouldn't see it. But that machine also
continues to suspend on login, which seemed to be "the straw that broke
the camel's back" and led me to reload Ubuntu in the first place: as it
boots, as soon as you put in the login password, it suspends (bug
1897185). This combination of bugs got it unstable which is why I tried
to reload Ubuntu late last week. Given all these errors, I can't really
get you a "clean" test.

But I can tell you that these four bugs seem to be inter-related. All
this started with the second last Ubuntu Updater packet in mid-
September, and got really bad with the last update packet which also
included an update to the nVidia driver, which affects the T570 (the
T440s is Intel graphics only). Both machines have Sierra Wireless WWAN,
which does not seem to be involved. So this was all around the update to
20.04.1.

Don't know if this helps but I hope so...

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1872159

Title:
  booting with splash hangs when external monitors are connected

Status in Plymouth:
  Unknown
Status in gdm3 package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in plymouth package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in gdm3 source package in Focal:
  Confirmed
Status in plymouth source package in Focal:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I think this is a problem with the splash boot loader. This problem is
  not reproduced if using nosplash.

  I have installed 20.04 to this laptop. Thinkpad T480, i7, intel
  graphics.

  Clean install of 20.04 beta, not an upgrade.
  When booting from the install, the greeter screen is never reached if external monitors are connected at startup.
  I get the spinning ubuntu logo, and nothing more. I can not change to virtual terminals. The fsck step does not commence.

  In recovery mood, I can log in.

  With no external monitors attached, it works.

  I am used to having such problems with Nvidia graphics is involved,
  but this is not the case on this laptop. It has been happily running
  18.04.

  External displays are recognised if they are connected after login.

  Also, when I edit /etc/default/grub so that it reads
  GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
  (that is, splash disabled)
  it works fine with two external monitors attached.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: xorg 1:7.7+19ubuntu14
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-21.25-generic 5.4.27
  Uname: Linux 5.4.0-21-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu26
  Architecture: amd64
  BootLog: Error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/log/boot.log'
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  CompositorRunning: None
  CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
  Date: Sat Apr 11 13:58:19 2020
  DistUpgraded: Fresh install
  DistroCodename: focal
  DistroVariant: ubuntu
  DkmsStatus:
   acpi-call, 1.1.0, 5.4.0-21-generic, x86_64: installed
   tp_smapi, 0.43, 5.4.0-21-generic, x86_64: installed
  ExtraDebuggingInterest: Yes, including running git bisection searches
  GraphicsCard:
   Intel Corporation UHD Graphics 620 [8086:5917] (rev 07) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
     Subsystem: Lenovo UHD Graphics 620 [17aa:225d]
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-04-10 (0 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Beta amd64 (20200402)
  MachineType: LENOVO 20L5S00F00
  ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-21-generic root=/dev/mapper/myvg-root ro
  SourcePackage: xorg
  Symptom: display
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
  dmi.bios.date: 02/19/2020
  dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.bios.version: N24ET56W (1.31 )
  dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
  dmi.board.name: 20L5S00F00
  dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.board.version: Not Defined
  dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
  dmi.chassis.type: 10
  dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
  dmi.chassis.version: None
  dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrN24ET56W(1.31):bd02/19/2020:svnLENOVO:pn20L5S00F00:pvrThinkPadT480:rvnLENOVO:rn20L5S00F00:rvrNotDefined:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNone:
  dmi.product.family: ThinkPad T480
  dmi.product.name: 20L5S00F00
  dmi.product.sku: LENOVO_MT_20L5_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad T480
  dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T480
  dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO
  version.compiz: compiz N/A
  version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.101-1
  version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 20.0.4-1ubuntu1
  version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 20.0.4-1ubuntu1
  version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.20.7-2ubuntu2
  version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev N/A
  version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:19.1.0-1
  version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.99.917+git20190815-1
  version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:1.0.16-1

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