I see two potential areas that might be causing this.
Please undo the current hacks (and set START_LIRCD to true) and try these (one at a time):
1) The udev rules for LIRC. Can you please try to comment them out (they're in /lib/udev/rules.d) and reboot?
2) The upstart job mount-varrun is racing with the init script. Try adding a sleep statement at the beginning of the init script for a few second and see if that helps. This isn't a proper solution, but if it fixes it then switching to an upstart drop will help.
I see two potential areas that might be causing this.
Please undo the current hacks (and set START_LIRCD to true) and try these (one at a time):
1) The udev rules for LIRC. Can you please try to comment them out (they're in /lib/udev/rules.d) and reboot?
2) The upstart job mount-varrun is racing with the init script. Try adding a sleep statement at the beginning of the init script for a few second and see if that helps. This isn't a proper solution, but if it fixes it then switching to an upstart drop will help.