USB boot time very slow on very fast machine?

[Zero]

I put Core Plus on a 256MB flash drive and it seemed to go well. Boots and shuts down unexpectedly quick on my Asus 1018p and Dell Precision 670. Another story altogether on my Intel mobo i5-760. Seems to hang forever at the syslinux 4.05 prompt. Works fine after it boots but what should I be looking for to resolve this slow boot on my i5?

[Rich]

Hi Zero
You could try adding the boot code  printk.time=1  to the  APPEND  line in your  extlinux.conf  file. Then reboot and
check the output of  dmesg and see if anything listed is taking a long time.

[Zero]

Hmmmm, can't seem to copy from aterm to paste here. 

[Rich]

Hi Zero
To copy, highlight the text using the left mouse button. To paste, place the mouse cursor where you want the text,
then left click, then center click. If you plan on pasting more than 15 or 20 lines, please place them in a file and
attach that to your post.

[Zero]

Glad you said something about the number of lines posted. Okay, here's the Asus 1018p dmesg output which is very zippy. I'm working now so the i5 machine will have to wait. I'll post that one this evening. Thanks for looking at it.

Z

[Rich]

Hi Zero

Glad you said something about the number of lines posted.

While there are no forum rules about this that I'm aware of, I feel that lengthy output from commands and log files
should either be trimmed or attached as .txt files as a courtesy to those interested in just reading a thread. It makes
me a little crazy when I have to scroll past a couple hundred lines of dmesg that someone dumped into their post.
The only thing I see is a 100 second time gap at the end, which I presume is you bringing up the wireless
connection manually.

[Zero]

I am totally with you on the lengthy post courtesy thing.

The Asus is not my problem child. This is an example of a fast booting machine. It's my i5-760 at home that gives me trouble. What I can tell you now (before I get home and show you the output) is that I did look at the dmesg output file and it ended at just under 15 seconds. So, if I'm to believe that, it boots faster than my Asus, but that is entirely untrue.

Whereas my Asus netbook hangs at the Syslinux 4.05 message for only 2-3 seconds, my i5 can hang there for a full minute or more. What this tells me is the delay is occurring well before printk.time can start.

[Zero]

Okay, here's my dmesg from the i5 whitebox. Turns out I was being kind when I said it hangs at the Syslinux screen for a minute or more. I put a stopwatch to it. 2 minutes, 5 seconds! 

[gerald_clark]

See if there is a BIOS update available.
It sounds like kernel and initrd are loading one sector at a time.

[Zero]

10H.86A is the latest and greatest for my Intel DQ57TM MoBo.

[Rich]

Hi Zero
I'd like you to try adding the following two boot codes:

Code: [Select]

maxcpus=0 max_addr=2Gjust to rule out a couple of possibilities.

[tinypoodle]

You could give this possible workaround a try:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=678820#c10

Not sure if on any benefit in your specific case, but then it can't harm to try

[curaga]

Well, your dmesg rules out anything at fault within TC. It's either your bootloader or BIOS.

So you could try grub too, after checking the above redhat workaround.

[Zero]

@Rich, still hangs. 2:05 on the dot.
@TP, right now my extlinux.conf looks like this

DEFAULT core
LABEL core
KERNEL /boot/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/boot/core.gz quiet  waitusb=5:UUID="22044847-dcd1-482b-b9c3-05b6c3fc2b19" tce=UUID="22044847-dcd1-482b-b9c3-05b6c3fc2b19" printk.time=1 maxcpus=0 max_addr=2G

How would I apply the workaround you suggest to this? I'll be removing the last 3 entries since they did not work anyway.

@Curaga, I'll try grub after this. Tnx.

[tinypoodle]

Not sure, guessing either

com32 linux.c32
APPEND /boot/vmlinuz ...

or

KERNEL com32 linux.c32
APPEND /boot/vmlinuz ...

Also not sure if you need to install full syslinux package first.

A good place to find assistance with such a case might be the #syslinux IRC channel on irc.freenode.net