Boot Very Slow (> 1 hour)

ballbreaker-uc · #1 7th January 2005, 09:28 AM

I installed from scratch Fedora Core 3 from ISO images on a box with:

ASUS P2B motherboard
Pentium II 400 MHz processor
512 MB RAM
18 GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
30 GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
Generic IDE DVD 12X drive
Generic IDE CD drive

In addition, I have installed all of the updates/patches for the kernel and applications.

I am annoyed that after GRUB starts it displays:

running Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.724_FC3):
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.724_FC3 ro root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.724_FC3.img

then it takes an 1 hour to as much 2 hours before /etc/rc.sysinit starts. I noticed the hard drive light is on the whole time. Once the system starts rc.sysinit, the boot time is fast.

What is /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.724_FC3 and /initrd-2.6.9-1.724_FC3.img doing before /etc/rc.sysinit begins and what do I need to change to minimize boot time to under 5 minutes?

terr9898 · #2 7th January 2005, 10:48 AM

Do you see an errors when you press Alt+F3 during this time?

Did you have this problem with the default kernel of FC3?
If not, could you consider downgrading?

ballbreaker-uc · #3 7th January 2005, 03:08 PM

Nothing happens when I press Alt-F3 or any other key. The computer just sits there doing nothing.

Yes, the problem occurred with the default kernel, too.

Redhat 7.1, 7.2, 8.0 and 9.0 never had this pause during bootup. They had the login prompt displayed with a couple of minutes after powering up the computer. If I can't troubleshoot why this pause is occurring, I will be forced to reinstall RedHat 9.0.

james_in_denver · #4 7th January 2005, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ballbreaker-uc

ASUS P2B motherboard
Pentium II 400 MHz processor
512 MB RAM
18 GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
30 GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
Generic IDE DVD 12X drive
Generic IDE CD drive

Quote:

In addition, I have installed all of the updates/patches for the kernel and applications.

Did you have this problem BEFORE you installed the updates/patches?, What specific updates/patches did you install?

You might want to download a different "kernel" rpm and install it with "rpm --install kernel-version.rpm", then next time boot the "different" kernel and see if it loads any faster.

You might also try unplugging the IDE cable for the 2 CD drives that you have, and then reboot. Are all of the IDE disk drives properly jumpered for "Master" or "Slave"??? The IDE connector farthest from the motherboard connector is for the "MASTER" device, while the connector in the middle is for the "SLAVE" device.

Quote:

then it takes an 1 hour to as much 2 hours before /etc/rc.sysinit starts. I noticed the hard drive light is on the whole time. Once the system starts rc.sysinit, the boot time is fast.

Something is very, very wrong with that, I have an old AMD 450 lying around with only 256 mb ram and IT boots in just a couple of minutes.

Quote:

What is /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.724_FC3 and /initrd-2.6.9-1.724_FC3.img doing before /etc/rc.sysinit begins and what do I need to change to minimize boot time to under 5 minutes?

grub is the "bootloader", it get's loaded from the "active/bootable" partition's first block, then (depending on whether or not you have an "initrd" for the kernel you are booting) it does either

a) Loads an "initrd image". this is a kernel with a very rudimentary startup environment that is used to load "modularized" devices drivers (devices drivers not "built into" the kernel), then when the deivices are initialized, it loads the "regular" kernel "over itself". That kernel then runs the rc.sysinit and continues with "regular" booting.

b) Or it can just load a "regular" kernel witch runs rc.sysinit and continues with the rest of the system startup scripts.

The difference is that some hardware environments/kernel configurations MUST have device drivers loaded by an "initrd" for the system to boot. The other option is just to build a custom kernel that has the device drivers "built in", in which case you can do away with creating/using an "initrd" to load those device drivers.

ballbreaker-uc · #5 7th January 2005, 10:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by james_in_denver

Did you have this problem BEFORE you installed the updates/patches?, What specific updates/patches did you install?

You might want to download a different "kernel" rpm and install it with "rpm --install kernel-version.rpm", then next time boot the "different" kernel and see if it loads any faster.

You might also try unplugging the IDE cable for the 2 CD drives that you have, and then reboot. Are all of the IDE disk drives properly jumpered for "Master" or "Slave"??? The IDE connector farthest from the motherboard connector is for the "MASTER" device, while the connector in the middle is for the "SLAVE" device.

Yes, the problem happened after I installed Fedora Core 3 from the ISO images. So the problem exists with both the kernel included in the ISO images and the latest kernel RPM. All drives have their master/slave settings correctly configured.

Quote:

Something is very, very wrong with that, I have an old AMD 450 lying around with only 256 mb ram and IT boots in just a couple of minutes.

grub is the "bootloader", it get's loaded from the "active/bootable" partition's first block, then (depending on whether or not you have an "initrd" for the kernel you are booting) it does either

a) Loads an "initrd image". this is a kernel with a very rudimentary startup environment that is used to load "modularized" devices drivers (devices drivers not "built into" the kernel), then when the devices are initialized, it loads the "regular" kernel "over itself". That kernel then runs the rc.sysinit and continues with "regular" booting.

b) Or it can just load a "regular" kernel witch runs rc.sysinit and continues with the rest of the system startup scripts.

The difference is that some hardware environments/kernel configurations MUST have device drivers loaded by an "initrd" for the system to boot. The other option is just to build a custom kernel that has the device drivers "built in", in which case you can do away with creating/using an "initrd" to load those device drivers.

How can I troubleshoot what is happening after grub loads the kernel and the initrd image to when it runs the rc.sysinit? I can't find any errors or warnings in /var/log/boot.log, /var/log/dmesg or /var/log/messages to figure out what is wrong.

I don't have time to create a custom kernel.

james_in_denver · #6 8th January 2005, 09:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ballbreaker-uc

Yes, the problem happened after I installed Fedora Core 3 from the ISO images. So the problem exists with both the kernel included in the ISO images and the latest kernel RPM. All drives have their master/slave settings correctly configured.

Darn, that would have been the easy problem to fix.

Quote:

How can I troubleshoot what is happening after grub loads the kernel and the initrd image to when it runs the rc.sysinit? I can't find any errors or warnings in /var/log/boot.log, /var/log/dmesg or /var/log/messages to figure out what is wrong.

I don't have time to create a custom kernel.

You really can't "troubleshoot" the initrd, or at least not very easily, and not without creating a "customized" initrd that logs everything it's doing. The initrd gets "overwritten"/"overlayed" when the run-time kernel is loaded (if you're curious, the last thing that initrd does is a system call "pivot_root()" to load the run-time kernel and mount the "/" root filesystem).

What other cards/motherboard resources are installed on your computer? It really sounds like an IRQ and/or device driver collision. have you tried turning off EVERYTHING not absolutely essential in your computer's BIOS? paralell port, serial ports, etc, and remove sound card, network card(s), etc????

ballbreaker-uc · #7 8th January 2005, 07:14 PM

I appreciate your suggestions james_in_denver on getting FC3 to work on my box. However, I have decided that Fedora Core 3 is not right for this box and reinstalled Redhat 9 back on it. Redhat 9 boots up quickly with none of issues that FC3 has booting.

drunkenmugsy · #8 8th January 2005, 07:17 PM

Did you change the default partitions? That is did you create partitions or did you let FC3 do it? I have seen a few threads here and elsewhere where those seem to go hand in hand(slow boot/custom partitions). Its almost like its looking for data in a default path and has to time out then search every time it R/W's a drive during boot. What would normally take microseconds to do now is taking 1 or 2 seconds each time...

ballbreaker-uc · #9 10th January 2005, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drunkenmugsy

Did you change the default partitions? That is did you create partitions or did you let FC3 do it?

Yes, I did. Also, I have tried with auto partitioning where the install creates LVM and volume groups. However the box still had the long delay from kernel loading and sysinit starting. I am giving up on Fedora Core and stay with Redhat 9. It appears that FC3 is not compatible!