"Quieter" boot on Ubuntu 18.04 with Mir

[alessio]

Hello! It’s more an integration question than related only to Mir.

We are using Mir Kiosk with Chromium on a cluster of fanless pc using Ubuntu 18.04 server and a touch screen.

During the boot sequence (we use a simple single image plymouth splash) there’s a short time when the screen blinks orange, then black, the login prompt appears, and then orange back and then the web page.

There’s a way to disable the “prompt” phase?

[alan_g]

That sounds as though mir-kiosk is being started and then restarted.

Could you check the logs to determine if that is the case? And if there’s any indication why?

[saviq]

@alessio you say you started from a server image, you had to install something that pulled the login prompt in?

Also, if you could share more about your use case (pictures!), we’d love to know more about what you’re doing with Mir

[alessio]

Hello, tomorrow i’ll grep the log files to see where the problem could be!

The server image is a standard Ubuntu 18.04 AMD64 server image, with a grub modified line “quiet splash” to support a custom splash screen.

Then it will be my pleasure to share some pictures of the application running, it’s an industrial solution, running on a IP66 industrial grade monitor

[saviq]

Had you considered running it under Ubuntu Core? It has a bunch of advantages for such scenarios

[alessio]

Hello!

The log is showing only a notification the service is starting, once a boot.

I’ve installade Mir using the standard procedure (snap install) then i’ve:

systemctl service enable mir-kiosk.service

otherwise the kiosk doesn’t start at boot.

@saviq: regarding Core, we are also using many Core based machines, but in this specific case we are facing an esotic touch screen display (resistive) that needs a custom driver, so before to try to integrate it in a Core image we have to do a lot of more test. For the more standard cases (touch display with capacitive technology and kernel embedded drivers) we are using usally Core

[alan_g]

The log is showing only a notification the service is starting, once a boot.

Mir only plays the orange animation on startup, so that implies that the sequence of events is:

1. Mir starts and begins the orange animation
2. “Something” takes over the display to show the login prompt
3. “Something” returns the display to Mir
4. Mir completes the orange animation

I doubt that Mir has any control over this: That “something” probably relates to the way you’ve set up Ubuntu Server.

I’ve installade Mir using the standard procedure (snap install) then i’ve:

systemctl service enable mir-kiosk.service

otherwise the kiosk doesn’t start at boot.

I’ve not used that approach. Mir defaults to daemon=false on Classic, but that can be overridden with snap set. Vis:

snap set mir-kiosk daemon=true

Does that not work for you?

[alessio]

@alan_g thank you!

My fault, totally forgot the correct way to work with snap, disabled Mir as a service and setting daemon=true now starts as expected.

Thanks for your support!

[alan_g]

My fault

Glad it’s fixed!

As a penance, could you write up how to configure Ubuntu Server for use with mir-kiosk? (We’ve had questions about this a couple of times, but there’s no post to direct folks to.)

[alessio]

Ahah, my pleasure! Writing right now.