Comment 15 for bug 625239

After spending hours pouring over Google results and bug reports like bug #529230 and bug #532047, I believe this is the bug I'm seeing on my Lucid (Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit on a new System76 Serval Pro--serp6) laptop. I have a decent amount of information to share, which corroborates this bug, and I've tried every workaround possible with no luck.

Honestly, bug #529230 appears a better fit, but it's listed as a duplicate of bug #532047, which supposedly released a fix. It was suggested that I comment on this bug. The slight difference between my experience and this bug's description is that I don't see a crash as soon as I press Enter, but rather later in my session it will crash when hitting Enter (after having pressed Enter many of times already).

Here is what I can confirm:

1. Upon first boot, I login to GNOME, and after normal use anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour, it will crash (always as I press Enter, to the best of my knowledge). I see a blank screen, and then the login screen again.

2. If I login again (after a crash, or if I just logout right away and login again), I never see another X reset until after a reboot.

3. After an initial boot up and first login, I'm always on tty1 or tty2, and I'll always get the X reset eventually (I'm certain I've witnessed this on both VT1 and VT2).

4. After logging in a second time (or if I just logout and login again after a boot), I'm always on VT8 and I never have an X reset.

5. On VT7 (Ctrl-Alt-F7), for both first and second logins, I always see an error like this:
(process:516) GLib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to unknown user id (0)

6. I see the following in auth.log, just before a crash (cat /var/log/auth.log | grep FAILED):
Sep 1 21:38:16 jkrug-serval login[6215]: FAILED LOGIN (1) on '/dev/tty1' FOR 'UNKNOWN', Authentication failure
Sep 1 21:38:19 jkrug-serval login[6215]: FAILED LOGIN (2) on '/dev/tty1' FOR 'UNKNOWN', Error in service module
Sep 1 21:38:22 jkrug-serval login[6215]: FAILED LOGIN (3) on '/dev/tty1' FOR 'UNKNOWN', Error in service module
Sep 1 21:38:25 jkrug-serval login[6215]: FAILED LOGIN (4) on '/dev/tty1' FOR 'UNKNOWN', Error in service module
Sep 1 21:38:27 jkrug-serval login[6215]: FAILED LOGIN (5) on '/dev/tty1' FOR 'UNKNOWN', Error in service module

Here are the suggested workarounds that do NOT work for me:

1. I've tried adding APT source ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates and reinstalling my nVidia (current) driver, as suggested in this thread on the issue:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1545846

2. I tried changing /etc/default/grub back to standard distro settings instead of System76-shipped version (also suggested in above mentioned thread).

3. I also tried the "temporary workaround" in bug #532047 -- sudo mv /etc/init/plymouth-splash.conf /etc/init/plymouth-splash.conf.disabled -- no change. *Actually, I later noticed that on the day I tried this, I definitely had an X reset/crash, but noticed that there was no "UNKNOWN" grep from /var/log/auth.log on that date. So, slight change, or just an anomaly, but either way still a horribly annoying bug.

I've spent many hours on this and would love to see it go away. BTW, I have nVidia current drivers with Ubuntu 10.04 64bit on my Dell Vostro 1510, which never has this issue--always login to VT7. I would be super appreciative if anyone has any ideas or if I can provide any further information. Thanks in advance for any help!