Delay during boot process on 11.4

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi all,

I have recently installed Suse 1.4_64 on my system. During the boot process I experience two delays of about 30 seconds, every time I boot up.

Any suggestions?

The system has is dual boot, multiple disks:

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB
/dev/sda1 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 Linux
/dev/sda4 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB
/dev/sdc1 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdd: 750.2 GB
/dev/sdd1 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdd2 Linux

Disk /dev/sde: 500.1 GB
/dev/sde1 Linux

Here is a snippet from dmesg:

5.248419] nvidia 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 24 (level, low) -> IRQ 24
5.248426] nvidia 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
5.248431] vgaarb: device changed decodes: PCI:0000:04:00.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=none:owns=io+mem
5.248566] NVRM: loading NVIDIA UNIX x86 Kernel Module  260.19.44  Sun Feb 27 21:30:31 PST 2011

35.744134] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
35.744357] ata2.00: failed command: IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE
35.744465] ata2.00: cmd a1/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 pio 512 in
35.744466] res 40/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
35.744729] ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
35.744797] ata2: hard resetting link
36.204126] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
37.006348] ata2.00: configured for PIO4
37.807142] ata2: EH complete
37.890491] Adding 4653052k swap on /dev/sda4. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:4653052k SS
38.084040] device-mapper: uevent: version 1.0.3
38.084187] device-mapper: ioctl: 4.18.0-ioctl (2010-06-29) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
69.476870] kjournald starting. Commit interval 15 seconds
69.477257] EXT3-fs (sde1): using internal journal
69.477260] EXT3-fs (sde1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode
69.482601] fuse init (API version 7.15)

Thanks in advance

Linux 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT 2011-02-21 10:34:10 +0100 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

#2

On 2011-04-14 20:36, u20380 wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have recently installed Suse 1.4_64 on my system. During the boot
> process I experience two delays of about 30 seconds, every time I boot
> up.
>
> Any suggestions?

splash=verbose

remove “quiet”.

Find out where it waits.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#3

Or just press ESC key when the splash appear. :wink:

#4

The first wait occurs at 5 seconds into the boot process, with an error message “ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen”
The second wait at 38 seconds, with a message “device-mapper: ioctl: 4.18.0-ioctl (2010-06-29) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com”

#5

You could install bootchart and use that to help you determine where any boot slow down may be.

One of our other moderators showed me how to do it. I installed the application bootchart , obtaining it from a factory repository:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Base:/System/openSUSE_Factory/

Then I opened an xterm (konsole also works in KDE) and restarted from the LXDE menu with that separate terminal open.

In the grub option line I entered:

init=/sbin/bootchartd

Then after the reboot was finished I again opened a terminal (or konsole) and that stopped the bootchart data collection process. I then waited a bit for the bootchart.png file to be created.

That produced the charts noted above. … I stumbled a bit on this and had to get help from some of the SuSE-GmbH team (via a bug report which illustrated my ignorance). The first chart shows apparmor was consuming ~26% of CPU during boot, so given it is not essential, I was advised it was a possible candidate to disable. It can be disabled with YaST > System > System Services (run level) > expert mode > boot.apparmor … etc … *.

Here is the bootchart.png of my sandbox PC, which is a truely ancient 32-bit athlon-1100 (running 11.4) with no optimisation (immediately after the install) and a rather slow and ancient nVidia FX5200 graphic card:
http://thumbnails38.imagebam.com/12247/83627c122466758.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/83627c122466758)

boot chart identified some areas that could be tuned …

Here is the same ancient athlon-1100 with the same openSUSE-11.4 install but with apparmor removed and the number of VT (terminal) sessions reduced. Much faster to boot (from 120 seconds to 85 seconds):
http://thumbnails38.imagebam.com/12248/019cec122475663.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/019cec122475663)

Probably more optimization could be done - but optimization of boot time is not a subject that interests me on such an old PC as my sandbox PC.*

#6

On 2011-04-15 14:06, u20380 wrote:
>
> The first wait occurs at 5 seconds into the boot process, with an error
> message “ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6
> frozen”
> The second wait at 38 seconds, with a message “device-mapper: ioctl:
> 4.18.0-ioctl (2010-06-29) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com”

Either a hardware problem, or a bug. Try another opensuse version: if it
doesn’t pause, report in bugzilla.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#7

On 2011-04-15 03:06, DaaX wrote:
>
> Or just press ESC key when the splash appear. :wink:

No, removing the “quiet” paramenter makes booting to be extra verbose and
log it all.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#8

Ah oki, so it is more verbose than just pressing the ESC key… I’ll remember this then. :wink:

#9

On 2011-04-15 16:06, DaaX wrote:

> Ah oki, so it is more verbose than just pressing the ESC key… I’ll
> remember this then. :wink:

I learned that recently, on a bugzilla :slight_smile:

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#10

Carlos,

I ran the 11.2 LiveCD and it ran like a breeze, no timeouts.
It does seem to be a bug indeed.

Thanks

#11

On 2011-04-17 22:36, u20380 wrote:
>
> Carlos,
>
> I ran the 11.2 LiveCD and it ran like a breeze, no timeouts.
> It does seem to be a bug indeed.

I don’t remember if your system was fully updated; if it isn’t, then do.
Otherwise, do a report in bugzilla. Attacch the boot log (with quiet
removed) and perhaps the output of dmesg. And wait…
I’m not sure if suggesting you should run an older version.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#12

I have disconnected all but the essential disks from my system.
The problem reappeared when I connected my DVD player, a TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223C

I have found the following email thread on Bugzilla.

[Bug 642289] System does not boot correctly with sysvinit-tools-2.88-15.1.x86_64.rpm or newer (blogd issue)

I also found an error message in dmesg “system console stolen”

I have now circumvented the problem by using a lower version of sysvinit-tools, as recommended in the bugzilla thread.