Andy> I've got a version of Ubuntu 13.10 in my Virtualbox OSE virtual Andy> computer. It hangs very early in the boot. GRUB runs and the Andy> boot starts. I've moved to Linux Mint myself, but it's based on Ubuntu and I've noticed that my main desktop, which NFS mounts home dirs and other stuff, takes *forever* to actually boot not. There's something in the setup which hangs for five minutes or so (not sure, I just walk away right now cause I rarely reboot the box...) before it continues. Have you just let the boot sit there to see if it ever finishes? I've been meaning to turn on verbose debugging to try and figure out what's going on too, but it's a low priority. Andy> In /var/log/boot.log, I see the same messages as I see on the Andy> screen. I have to press ESC to see the text while the computer Andy> boots. There are perhaps 3 or 4 "Starting <service>....OK" Andy> messages, and that is all. I never get a chance to log in. So which services start? Or more accurately, which is the last service to start? Have you looked in /var/log/upstart as well? You might be able to also setup your system so that init (upstart) is started with the -v option to increase verbosity. Andy> The problem I have is that I don't know in which order the boot Andy> scripts are supposed to run. With the "old" initscripts, one Andy> would see Snn<script> or Knn<script> and the "nn" would be the Andy> number representing the order in which the scripts are "S"tarted Andy> or "K"illed. That isn't the case here. They're supposed to run according to events, not any particular order. The idea is that as things become ready, the next step can fire off more quickly, without the system getting stuck behind some hanging process. Good luck! John P.S. Another idea might be to try and boot a default 13.10 install in another VM and see how that looks in the console. It should be similiar at least, if not fairly identical. John