[nzlug] [OT] New MoBo takes moons to boot

[Daniel Pittman]

"Glenn Enright" <glenn.enright at gmail.com> writes:

>> At that point, no filesystem driver is available to grub, so grub
>> implements its own minmalistic one (lilo doesn't even try, which is
>> why you need to reinstall it each time your kernel changes). If
>> there's a problem with the filesystem this can take aaages. Run an
>> fsck and see if that fixes it.
>
> Actually that did help speed it up a bit, but I suspect that there is
> some non-standard aspect to the sata interface on this MB that forces
> grub to take a secondary (slower) path? Or maybee its just slow :p. No
> idea, but definitely faster than it was. Thanks for the tip!

I meant to respond to this earlier, but:

GRUB and LILO both use the BIOS to load blocks off the disk at the start
of the boot process.  This means, of course, that they are subject to
all sorts of crazy BIOS oddities. ;)

Traditionally there were three things that made a big difference:

Turning on, or off, the LBA support could make a change.  Some BIOS
implementations were crazy-slow in one mode by lightning in the other.


The other was the LILO 'compact' option, which make one BIOS call to
read a sequential run of blocks rather than one call per block.

That didn't fix the problem but it could really reduce the pain if the
BIOS didn't perform well.  Sadly, though, GRUB doesn't have a similar
setting -- it just doesn't fit the design.


Anyway, the likely answer is that something in your BIOS is the cause of
the delays.  It probably isn't dealing with the SATA controller awfully
well, so you get slow performance until a better driver takes over the
hardware.


Anyway, two things to try: you could try a BIOS update.  A newer version
may resolve the problem you have encountered.

You could also try changing various hardware and device related options
in the BIOS.  Some of them may be responsible for the poor performance
seen during the boot sequence -- even USB support can cause odd (and
slow) paths to become active...

Regards,
        Daniel
-- 
Digital Infrastructure Solutions -- making IT simple, stable and secure
Phone: 0401 155 707        email: contact at digital-infrastructure.com.au
                 http://digital-infrastructure.com.au/