Public bug reported: I have two computers affected by this and one that is not, each running Precise. I've tracked down the cause, but I'm not sure which of the components involved (friendly-recovery, resolvconf, postfix and upstart) is the culprit, so I'll file this for friendly-recovery which is at least severly affected. Feel free to correct the target with better insight.
Steps to reproduce: 0. Have the 'postfix' and 'resolvconf' packages installed. 1. Boot into recovery mode. What happens: The boot proceeds in nonsplash (text) mode, but in the end the recovery menu fails to show up. Instead the graphical greeter is brought up. What I expect to happen: For the recovery menu to show up so I can use it. The cause: For debugging this, I first enabled logging for friendly-recovery.conf. That log implicated resolvconf, so I enabled logging for resolvconf, and that in turn revealed this: cp: cannot create regular file `/var/spool/postfix/etc/resolv.conf': Read-only file system So I checked, and indeed postfix wasn't there on my laptop which wasn't affected. It seems that due to the read-only file system, the resolvconf upstart job fails, which in turn leads to the resolvconf-dependent friendly-recovery job to also fail. The workaround: Uninstall postfix if you can afford to. ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04 Package: friendly-recovery 0.2.19 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-14.23-generic 3.2.3 Uname: Linux 3.2.0-14-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 1.91-0ubuntu1 Architecture: amd64 CheckboxSubmission: 09ae689090491ca53449589269e4bfd8 CheckboxSystem: edda5d4f616ca792bf437989cb597002 Date: Mon Feb 6 20:36:29 2012 EcryptfsInUse: Yes InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027) PackageArchitecture: all SourcePackage: friendly-recovery UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-01-17 (20 days ago) mtime.conffile..etc.init.friendly.recovery.conf: 2012-02-06T20:17:28.034920 ** Affects: friendly-recovery (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Tags: amd64 apport-bug precise running-unity -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/927803 Title: Fails to launch recovery menu when (at least) Postfix installed To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/friendly-recovery/+bug/927803/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs