Long pause during boot

[nObRaIn]

Hi all,

I'm new around here and I've been playing with tiny core for a couple of days now. At the moment I have a working system on a USB stick with just a browser, ntfs support, and wireless network with wpa. I am impressed with TC and I already have a couple of projects in mind where TC would fit nicely. I have already tested this setup on four different systems at home and it seems to be working great, but I have a small issue with a fifth, much older system. This is more an annoyance than an issue but I would still like to try and troubleshoot it if possible.

In this particular system, after loading tinycore.gz, I see the msg ".....ready" and it stops there for more than a minute. After this pause everything seems to be working normally and the process continues. The first message I see after this pause is "tcp reno registered".

Is there any possible way to see what happens during this pause and find what could be causing it?

This is an old celeron 333 notebook with 128mb of ram, no bios support for booting from usb devices (except for an external usb floppy drive), and a single usb port available. I am not sure if this is of any relevance, but for the test I just boot the system with a floppy containing plop, I swap the floppy drive with my TC usb stick, and I boot TC from there. I also use pcmcia cards for both wired and wireless connectivity as the notebook does not have any onboard means for connecting to the network.

[tinypoodle]

Boot with param 'syslog'
Log is in /var/log/messages

[nObRaIn]

thanks for the quick suggestion. it seems there is a lot going on during this "pause" but the time-stamp is exactly the same for all entries (from "syslog started..." to "tcp reno registered"). Assuming that syslog's time-stamps are accurate, it looks like the delay is happening before syslog is even started.

Can it be that tinycore.gz needs more than a minute to load on such an old system (assuming again, that the "ready" message is not accuratre)? or, what else can be happening between that (the "ready" msg) and the time syslog actually starts?

[curaga]

Use "debug" to see kernel messages before syslog is started.

[thane]

Any chance it's because of USB 1.0 (the early implementation of USB)?

When I first started using TC (on a Compaq Deskpro EN) I was booting from CD with the extensions/backup on USB, and even with a small number of extensions it took a while to boot. You've got everything including the core pieces on USB so I assume it would take even longer.

Now running TC on a box with USB 2.0 and everything installed on USB, and it boots in a few seconds (I'm still not using many extensions though).

[nObRaIn]

thanks again for the suggestions. i did try using "debug" but the messages scroll too fast to read in detail. Is there any way I can log this info?

In any case, it looks like there is no delay there, so i'm leaning towards the usb 1.0 explanation as it still takes a couple of minutes from the time i see the ready message to the time i see anything else on the screen, even with "debug".

Unfortunately i don't have any other systems with usb 1.0 at home to test, but i did try booting the same notebook with the unmodified tiny core 3.3 and it didn't make any difference at all.

[tinypoodle]

thanks again for the suggestions. i did try using "debug" but the messages scroll too fast to read in detail. Is there any way I can log this info?

See Reply # 1

[^thehatsrule^]

If you boot with "pause", you can scroll up/down with shift+pgup/dn.

I concur with the thoughts on slow loading during the booting stage (have also had slow boots due to this).  Assuming it can reach the theoretical throughput of 12Mbit/s, it would take ~7 seconds to read ~10MB... but actual speeds are typically much less.

Edit: Side note: Wikipedia article: "For USB 1.1, an average transfer speed of 880 KiB/s has been observed." which would bring the time to ~12s

[tinypoodle]

I would be curious what happens if you follow the same boot procedure as closely as practically reproducible on a newer PC - even if that involves a USB 2.0 port.

[nObRaIn]

Side note: Wikipedia article: "For USB 1.1, an average transfer speed of 880 KiB/s has been observed." which would bring the time to ~12s

And yet, it takes a couple of minutes in my case. I did try loading tc with "pause" but I still miss the very first messages even if I scroll all the way up.

thanks again for the suggestions. i did try using "debug" but the messages scroll too fast to read in detail. Is there any way I can log this info?

See Reply # 1

I can't find anything in /var/log if i boot with "debug" alone, and syslog gives me the same log with or without debug.

I would be curious what happens if you follow the same boot procedure as closely as practically reproducible on a newer PC - even if that involves a USB 2.0 port.

I did try that (if you mean booting via floppy with plop etc) but it didn't make any obvious difference. The newer PC boots as fast as if it was booting directly from the usb stick.