Hi LGB, thanks for persisting with the additional testing, and figuring out how to work around the network issue.
Looking at netconkern.log, I agree with your assessment that the failure occurs well before X starts up. The log is a bit confusing as to what exactly is failing, however it appears that drm initializes (successfully apparently), at 19 sec, and then failures begin to occur when networking is set up: [ 79.112037] ieee80211 phy0: Failed to initialize wep: -110 [ 243.716037] INFO: task jbd2/sda1-8:263 blocked for more than 120 seconds. Then various parts of the kernel start failing with errors relating to I guess memory errors? It is quite interesting that toggling KMS on or off changes the behavior. This makes me wonder if perhaps the issue is that the drm module is leaving the kernel in an inconsistent state, such that subsequent modules fail. I've added a task for the kernel, since this appears to be a kernel drm bug of some sort. ** Also affects: linux (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Bug watch added: freedesktop.org Bugzilla #36007 http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36007 ** Also affects: xserver-xorg-driver-ati via http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36007 Importance: Unknown Status: Unknown -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/735126 Title: [natty] system freezes on boot without disabling KMS -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs