Bug 758534

Summary: Laptop fails to enter graphical login screen when connected to an external display
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: suematsu01
Component: kernelAssignee: Kernel Maintainer List <kernel-maint>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 16CC: gansalmon, itamar, jonathan, kernel-maint, madhu.chinakonda
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i686   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-03-01 15:39:24 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Attachments:
Description Flags
lshw, lspci, lsusb and lsmod outputs
none
custom fstab none

Description suematsu01 2011-11-30 01:09:22 UTC
Created attachment 538344 [details]
lshw, lspci, lsusb and lsmod outputs

Description of problem:
GUI fails to load when booting Fedora in a laptop connected to an external display.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
3.1.2-1.fc16.i686
3.1.0-7.fc16.i686

How reproducible:
Boot Fedora 16 in a laptop connected to an external monitor.
  
Actual results:
Plymouth keeps idle, as if the system loading froze. Some messages appear, and after 1~3 minutes, error messages about an X error and aborts will appear. Then the system fallbacks to console mode. System is responsive to keyboard input during the entire scenario - it's possible to ctrl-alt-del at any time.

Expected results:
Fedora 16 loading normally with the laptop connected to an external display.

Additional info:
No problems when loading without connected to an external display. Can connect and use an external display normally after login screen appears and also in the middle of a session - extended desktop, single monitor (both built-in and external) and mirrored display working as well.

Comment 1 suematsu01 2011-11-30 01:14:57 UTC
Corrections:

How reproducible:
Always.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Boot Fedora 16 in a laptop connected to an external monitor.

Comment 2 suematsu01 2011-12-05 12:14:19 UTC
Created attachment 540831 [details]
custom fstab

The last line commented in the fstab file was the cause of the problem - It was written by me to mount an ntfs partition with personal files during startup.

Comment 3 suematsu01 2011-12-05 12:16:19 UTC
Comment on attachment 540831 [details]
custom fstab

Update:
More details.

Ok, so aparently the ntfs automount line I put on fstab was causing the problem:
/dev/sda2 /media/data ntfs-3g defaults 0 0

I commented the line above in fstab, and now the system loads normally even when there's an external monitor plugged. Also, The VGA cable doesn't even need to be connected to an external monitor. Plugging a VGA cable in the laptop's VGA port is sufficient condition to trigger the automount error.

I still want to know if there's an workaround for this problem, because I still want the flexibility of automount - and can't understand why an VGA cable stick into the VGA port would trigger an automount error during startup.

This is what I see on the screen during startup when the error occurs:
(...)
Started Show Plymouth Boot Screen
Started Initialize storage subsystems (RAID, LVM, etc.)...
Starting Initialize storage subsystems (RAID, LVM, etc.)...
Starting Monitoring of LVM2 mirrors, snapshots, etc. using dmeventd or progress polling...
Started Monitoring of LVM2 mirrors, snapshots, etc. using dmeventd or progress polling...
[   55.028755] sd 0:0:0:0:[sda] asking for cache data failed
[   55.028755] sd 0:0:0:0:[sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
Starting /media/data aborted because a dependency failed
Starting mark the need to relabel after reboot aborted because a dependency failed
Welcome to emergency mode. Use "system ctl default" or ^D to activate default mode
Give root password for maintenance
(or type Control-D to continue)

Comment 4 Josh Boyer 2012-03-01 15:39:24 UTC
This seems to be more of an issue with how systemd is treating your fstab line.  I don't think this is a kernel problem from what I've seen here.