I posted about this a week ago, but my thread can’t be found anymore, so here goes…
I’m new to Linux, tried Ubuntu, had slow boot problems, tried openSUSE 11.1, still have slow boot problems. The issue seems to be that the ata.0 device is slow to respond (ERROR= -16), the boot system forces a hard reset, then a soft reset, configures for UDMA 133, says the drive is ready, then does it again, three times, and then configures the drive for UDMA 100. It’s a brand new Western Digital Caviar drive, and windowsXP likes it just fine. Once SUSE boots, everything seems to work just fine. I thought the problem might be with the drive jumpers, so I reset them from cable detect to master/single. No change in the problem. Any suggestions?
How slow is Slow?
Did you try failsafe boot, is it the same?
Caf4926-
Slow is about four or five minutes. Almost all that time is taken by the ata reset sequence being repeated four times. I haven’t tried the fail-safe boot- I’ll try that once I get grub going again. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong ‘windows’ entry to launch, it launched windows recovery, and that disabled grub. The SUSE repair module tells me grub has errors, but even though it says it has fixed them, it fails on reboot.
I looked at the hardware compatibility pages- no help there. My machine (HP Media Center m1160n, athlon 3400+ 64 bit processor) is not listed, nor is there any info on specific hard drives. Perhaps it’s something about the drive installation, since it’s a replacement drive- but I haven’t been able to figure out what. And, as I said, Windows seems to like the drive just fine.
I am also experiencing boot times of between 2 and 2.5 minutes, which seems rather slow to me. I have read on the Opensuse forums that it is not unusual for the 11.1 to complete the boot process in under a minuter or so, so I would like to try and understand what it is that is slowing my boot process.
I have installed 11.1 on my desktop PC, specs as follows:
- AMD Athlon+ 1700MHz CPU
- 2.5 GB RAM
- 11.1 GNOMe installed on 40GB Western Digital HD (master IDE)
- WXP installed on a 120GB Maxtor HD (slave IDE)
- Dual boot to either 11.1 (default) or WXP or FailSafe
In order to try and troubleshoot this slow booting problem, I have tried to boot using the Failsafe option. When I do this I see the various stages of boot process scroll on the screen (as opposed to the green GUI and status bar that I see when booting normally). When the Failsafe boot process has finished, all that I see is the linux command prompt. Is that normal? How do I launch the GNOME desktop environment from this command prompt? Or am I not supposed to do this when booting using the Failsafe option.
Hoping someone with more Opensuse experience can lend some assistance.
You cannot boot Failsafe into a desktop. Please post the contents of /var/log/boot.msg so that we can see what is happening.
Meanwhile: boottimes of under 1 minute are not likely on your system, then again 4 to 5 minutes is not normal.
When I choose the Failsafe boot mode, I find that the linux command prompt appears about 30 seconds earlier than when I boot the normal way. Not sure what this means or how I can use this information to reduce the overall normal boot time.
I tried to post the contents of my boot.msg file. I was unsuccessful at this, however, as it was rejected by the forum due to it being too long. Any thoughts on how I can post this boot.msg file?
Save the text to a new file in your /home/uer
and post somewhere like: Free file hosting and online storage
A copy of my boot.msg file can be found at the following URL.
http://www.fileden.com/getfile.php?file_path=http://www.fileden.com/files/2009/5/8/2435275/boot.msg.
Thank you to caf4926 for telling me how to make this file available to the forum.
Appreciate any further advice in relation to the slow boot up process.
mestjm adjusted his/her AFB on Saturday 09 May 2009 05:56 to write:
>
> A copy of my boot.msg file can be found at the following URL.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/rakhz4.
>
> Thank you to caf4926 for telling me how to make this file available to
> the forum.
>
> Appreciate any further advice in relation to the slow boot up process.
>
>
Not had much time to study but what does jump out at me is the:
ata1.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
errors, a quick gurgle and it could be a drive going bad or just a bug in
the libata driver depending on where you get the info from.
I found some kernel reports on earlier kernel versions ( 2.6.22 I think )
where this was discussed I would have thought it would have been fixed by
these versions by now though.
As I say that was just a quick scan of your boot.txt and have not really
studied your full hardware config so take with pinch of salt, it is Sat
morning you know 
No definitive answer but maybe a hint.
HTH
Mark
Nullus in verba
Nil illigitimi carborundum
Not had much time to study but what does jump out at me is the:
ata1.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Thank you Mark for your analysis.
What disk does ata1.01 refer to?
When you say “gurgle”, does this mean “google”? Sorry for this question, just not used to what might be common expressions in various forums.
ata1.01: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Paste that in google
You can just highlight it with your mouse, then right click in FF and from the context menu search google for…
I did it and the first hit goes to some ubuntu ref’s
Obviously it’s related to your sata controllers (which is why I asked you to use failsafe boot). It disables certain kernel arguments and boots in verbose so you can see the boot messages, watch it carefully. See where it hangs, what errors you see.
Possible solutions:
Look for a BIOS update
Are you using the latest kernel from Updates? Consider rolling back, try all that are avilable.
Try different OS’s versions of SUSE and or even other distros.
mestjm adjusted his/her AFB on Sunday 10 May 2009 04:26 to write:
Looks like I was beaten to it by caf4926
> When you say “gurgle”, does this mean “google”? Sorry for this
> question, just not used to what might be common expressions in various
> forums.
No my bad there, it is a phrase I sometimes use and forget most people will
not realise what I mean.
Cheers
–
Mark
Nullus in verba
Nil illigitimi carborundum
Why is sata involved? The 2 hard disks in my system are IDE drives. What does sata have to do with this?
Look for a BIOS update
Presumably for my motherboard. Haven’t done BIOS updates on a motherbaord for a long time. Last time I did one, about 15 years ago, I rendered the machine unbootable, even though I am sure I followed the instructions to the letter.
Are you using the latest kernel from Updates?
How can I check this?
Consider rolling back, try all that are avilable.
How difficult is this? How do I obtain earlier kernel versions? Does this involve having to re-format my hard disks / re-install opensuse?
Try different OS’s versions of SUSE
Do you mean 11.0 and earlier? I assume this means a re-install and format of my hard disk etc. Would my assumption be correct?
and or even other distros.
Like Ubuntu, etc.? Any recommendations?
Thank again for all your help.
15yrs
Surely this is not 15+yrs old?
No, it is not. Sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the last time that I did a BIOS upgrade was on a machine that I had 15 years ago. Not the one that I have installed 11.1 on and that is the subject of my concerns at the moment.
in a terminal do
uname -a
post result
explain if this is a new install and if you have experience the issue always or just recently
Here is the result of running the above…
Linux linux-td2o 2.6.27.21-0.1-default #1 SMP 2009-03-31 14:50:44 +0200 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
explain if this is a new install and if you have experience the issue always or just recently
The slow boot problem that I am having is related to a new install and I have never experienced this problem before as this is the first time that I have ever installed a linux distribution.
Bump. Sorry, just very new to the linux world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caf4926
Obviously it's related to your sata controllers
Why is sata involved? The 2 hard disks in my system are IDE drives. What does sata have to do with this?
Quote:
Look for a BIOS update
Presumably for my motherboard. Haven't done BIOS updates on a motherbaord for a long time. Last time I did one, about 15 years ago, I rendered the machine unbootable, even though I am sure I followed the instructions to the letter.
Quote:
Are you using the latest kernel from Updates?
How can I check this?
Quote:
Consider rolling back, try all that are avilable.
How difficult is this? How do I obtain earlier kernel versions? Does this involve having to re-format my hard disks / re-install opensuse?
Quote:
Try different OS's versions of SUSE
Do you mean 11.0 and earlier? I assume this means a re-install and format of my hard disk etc. Would my assumption be correct?
Quote:
and or even other distros.
Like Ubuntu, etc.? Any recommendations?