gazebo hanging on Precise after upgrade from Lucid

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I have two systems running Ubuntu Precise with ROS Groovy. The one installed directly from the Precise ISO runs gazebo correctly. The other one, upgraded from a previous Lucid install, will not run gazebo at all. There may be other differences, but that is the only one I can discern so far.

I would much appreciate help sorting this out. I don't know what to do next.

The failure can be demonstrated running the ROS Starting Gazebo Tutorial:

$ sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-simulator-gazebo
$ source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash
$ roslaunch gazebo_worlds empty_world.launch

That last command yields the following output:

... logging to /home/joq/.ros/log/e0bd20aa-6007-11e2-8f08-00248cfb2904/roslaunch-vision-4-23137.log
Checking log directory for disk usage. This may take awhile.
Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
Done checking log file disk usage. Usage is <1GB.

started roslaunch server http://vision-4:36798/

SUMMARY
========

PARAMETERS
 * /rosdistro
 * /rosversion
 * /use_sim_time

NODES
  /
    gazebo (gazebo/gazebo)
    gazebo_gui (gazebo/gui)

auto-starting new master
process[master]: started with pid [23151]
ROS_MASTER_URI=http://vision-4.local:11311

setting /run_id to e0bd20aa-6007-11e2-8f08-00248cfb2904
process[rosout-1]: started with pid [23164]
started core service [/rosout]
process[gazebo-2]: started with pid [23178]
Gazebo multi-robot simulator, version 1.2.5
Copyright (C) 2012 Nate Koenig, John Hsu, and contributors.
Released under the Apache 2 License.
http://gazebosim.org

process[gazebo_gui-3]: started with pid [23185]
Gazebo multi-robot simulator, version 1.2.5
Copyright (C) 2012 Nate Koenig, John Hsu, and contributors.
Released under the Apache 2 License.
http://gazebosim.org

Warning [parser.cc:358] Converting a deprecatd SDF source[/opt/ros/groovy/stacks/simulator_gazebo/gazebo_worlds/worlds/empty.world].
  Version[1.0] to Version[1.2]
  Please use the gzsdf tool to update your SDF files.
    $ gzsdf convert [sdf_file]
Warning [Converter.cc:191] Deprecated SDF Values in original file:
<background rgba='0.5 0.5 0.5 1'

Warning [Converter.cc:191] Deprecated SDF Values in original file:
<background

[ INFO] [1358359776.744578326]: waitForService: Service [/gazebo/set_physics_properties] has not been advertised, waiting...
Msg Waiting for master.Msg Waiting for master.........................................

That hangs indefinitely, until I type control-C to interrupt it, yielding this:

[gazebo_gui-3] killing on exit
[gazebo-2] killing on exit

Error [ConnectionManager.cc:89] Connection Manager is not running
................[gazebo-2] escalating to SIGTERM
[rosout-1] killing on exit
[master] killing on exit
shutting down processing monitor...
... shutting down processing monitor complete
done

I was unsure whether my problem was with gazebo or the ROS package, so I tried following the standalone Gazebo instructions:

sudo apt-get install gazebo
. /usr/share/gazebo-1.3/setup.sh
gazebo

That failed similarly, and had to be interrupted:

Gazebo multi-robot simulator, version 1.3.1
Copyright (C) 2012 Nate Koenig, John Hsu, and contributors.
Released under the Apache 2 License.
http://gazebosim.org

Gazebo multi-robot simulator, version 1.3.1
Copyright (C) 2012 Nate Koenig, John Hsu, and contributors.
Released under the Apache 2 License.
http://gazebosim.org

Msg Waiting for master.Msg Waiting for master...................................................................................^C
Error [ConnectionManager.cc:89] Connection Manager is not running
.....Warning [gazebo_main.cc:57] escalating to SIGKILL on server

I had tried installing ... (more)