Greetings,
I've installed Ubuntu Server ver. 11.10 about 30 times in the last 2 days. Most have been for the learning experience and others have been to solve specific questions and try to sort out basic commands. I'm working with an older Supermicro server with a SCSI backplane. I have set up one mirror (36gb) to contain the OS. The additional raid 5, 278GB has not been set up as I've been waiting to get the server working properly. There are additional SATA storage drives.
First when I reboot the system right after installing the initial server load, the server automatically reboots and goes to the GRUB menu and almost immediately starts to boot. The screen goes blank for a minute or so and then I see large lines of white graphical characters running down the screen. I usually hard reboot the system when all of the lines stop. If I watch the boot sequence and anticipate when the grub screen is going to start, I can press the down arrow and the grub screen will stay and then I can select a boot option. Sometimes the same thing happens and other times it will boot successfully. I have checked and double checked the memory, hard drive etc. This server worked fine with MS Server 2003 so I think this might be a configuration concern. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Hi poltergiest

We have difficulties here to help you, since you don't tell us the text that showed up during booting phase.

In order to do that, allow me to give you hints:
- Press space or escape when Linux is about to boot. That would show you the GRUB (Linux boot loader) OS selection screen.

- Make sure it highlight the upper most entry. Use up and down arrow to move cursor if neccessary

- Press "e" (that is, "e" character). Find the line that contains the words "quiet" and/or "splash". Remove any of their occurences.

- Press Ctrl+X to boot. That should shows you the boot message explicitly now.

I guess we need more or less 20 lines before Linux hangs. You could write the messages down or simply use digital camera and get a picture. Then kindly show us

I hope I explain the steps clearly

Thanks for your response, Let me see if I can explain better. I boot the server and walk away. As the server boots it selects a start-up which I assume is the top of the list default. The screen goes blank and then rows of white background blocks with odd characters appear and scroll down the screen. There is no determinable text only gibberish. It takes a few minutes and then comes to a point and completely locks up. If I restart the server and watch it boot just before the grub screen loads I push the down arrow which moves the cursor to the lower selections on the grub list. Then, the list will stay on the screen. I can then select the topmost selection and 70% or 80% of the time the machine will boot as it should. I hope this clarifies things. Thanks in advance.

Hi again

Sound like plymouth problem. It's the boot splash animation module that works side by side with GRUB AFAIK.

There aren't much experience I have with plymouth, so perhaps google is your best friend here.

BTW, just to add, if somehow you manage to try my previous advice, add "vga=normal" to the kernel parameter. I read somewhere that it could prevent plymouth to be invoked.

Good luck